Holiday Parties: Death to the Waistline

The invites have gone out and come in.
Holiday party season is upon us. Now, our only hope, while listening to the wife of our best client (the boring wife of our best client), is not to overindulge in ways that will have us later lamenting the impact on our businesses...or on our waistlines.
From ... say

Forget about honey hams and apple pies. What's really going to widen your
waistline this month is the booze. Americans drink more hard liquor in December than any other time of the year, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a national trade association.

That extra alcohol not only packs on the pounds, it encourages us to eat more, says Marisa Moore, a registered and licensed dietitian and a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, a Chicago-based professional organization of those in the food and nutrition (read more)...

Now, if we can all keep to the wine spritzers and Diet Cokes and keep our wits about us....

LNB #050: Gobbledygook

Leverage... Cutting edge... Scalable... ...and the list goes on.

When did our business communication stop being authentic and start being a frantic race to leverage robust world-class business intel that offers flexible, yet scalable, capabilities to help achieve (I really wanted to say "leverage" again) potential and future stakeholder value?

Listening to what passes for business communication sometimes give me hives, like Frank Zappa's Valley Girl with its collection of "likes" and "totallys."

Fer sure.

We can do much better when speaking and writing to each other. We just don't. Gobbledygook, a kind of mutated chat or scribe to impress has become a nearly Olympian sport and is far less entertaining to witness. Many of us could use a Gobbledygook Book (a Dictionary of Acronyms Abbreviations Initializations & Esoteric Terminology) to keep track of the arcane terms we hear in meetings and, hell, on TV.

Use language that is clear and check in to make sure that your intended meaning is coming across. Trust me: people will cheer.

Read this article from Web Ink Now on gobbledygook in marketing. It's a good one.

Listen Now: 13:44

Gobbledygook. Anyone else had enough of meaningless gibberish in business documents?

Leverage...
Cutting edge...
Scalable...
...and the list goes on.

When did our business communication stop being authentic and start being a frantic race to leverage robust world-class business intel that offers flexible, yet scalable, capabilities to help achieve (I really wanted to say "leverage" again) potential and future stakeholder value?

Um, I feel a little bit better. Can you tell I've been reading some deadly emails today...and casting a jaundiced eye to some that I've recently written as well?

What is your least favorite gobbledygook business term or phrase? Bonus points if you're willing to write it on a 3x5 card, set it on fire and never use it again.

Chime in on the discussion here or here.

What Is Your Super Power?

I was heading home from a conference in New Orleans (BK, before Katrina). There were two other ladies from my city who were traveling with me. When we got to the airport, we learned that all the flights were overbooked (the city was packed to the seams with conference-goers, graduating seniors and the like). The gate attendant was telling each person in turn the situation and getting back less than the milk of human kindness. One of my party started to work herself into a panic attack (explaining that she'd packed her meds and checked them at the curb....*).

So, I gathered up all three tickets and told both women to take have a seat.

Just before it was my turn, a disgruntled almost-passenger ripped into the gate attendant with a napalm-level barrage, suggesting that her parents were never married. Then, it was my turn. When she began her spiel with gritted teeth, I told her that I knew she didn't create the problem and that she would do her best to get us home...that night. Then, I flashed a sincere, though toothy grin and shut up.

She got us out on the last flight of the night, after typing what looked like a manifesto into her computer.

On the way back, the other ladies dubbed me Charmella, The Charming One. The name has stuck.

I get called in to deal with execs with whithering temperaments, partnership meetings where people are afraid to drink anything they didn't bring, project teams that can only agree that the boss is the devil and deserves a stake in the throat (and have written the project charter to carry it out).

I can disarm the nasty at 20 yards. They never see it coming.

If mine is the power of charm (I have southern parents on both sides), what, praytell, is yours?

Cross-posted at linkedin.com

Linked In

For those of you who have not discovered LinkedIn as yet, I can hardily recommend it for accessing a wide network of professionals globally.

Since I was introduced to the grown-up's version of myspace or facebook, I have really gotten engaged in asking questions, answering questions and being of service where possible.

I hasn't become an obsession yet, but I can seee my ADD dancing around the fringes.

Check it out: www.linkedin.com