This series is interested in the decoding of obscure languages. To start: the language of HEC and start-up with the French journalist Jules Thomas, who flushes out the tics of the language of management in his columns “L’argot de bureau”.
Nothing is going anymore. The performativity by theempoweringTHE nudge and the job crafting in the blue ocean become as vital as theupskillingTHE soft skills and theikigai to counter the quiet firing.
Kececa? Where are we here? The scene is obviously in France. In France, that is to say nowhere and everywhere for the new globalized world of business, often digital and almost always Anglo-American.
All these words from business unbearably cool find themselves dissected in the delicious and instructive column “Office slang” published in the daily The world for two years. The review, each time accompanied by a somewhat ironic explanation, already brings together some sixty notions.
Jules Thomas patiently constructs his lexicography, at the rate of a word or an expression every two weeks. It deals with World, for three years, on let’s say microeconomic subjects: work, management, recruitment, training. As part of this assignment, he interviewed people from human resources, business leaders or union representatives. Their extremely jargonous vocabulary quickly jumped out at him.
“In addition, our readers are attached to the French language, perhaps more than in other media, explains Mr. Thomas to the Duty. When writing the first articles, I had to explain, every five lines, in French, between square brackets or parentheses, certain themes or job titles, for example: “I-don’t-know-what chief officer”. The idea of the column was born from there. »
The dreadful capitalism
He understands that management consultants and hiring pros often relay this gibberish by borrowing it from the French or American business press. This is the case of the expression “ deep work ”, taken from a bestselling book on personal development published in France in 2017 by Cal Newport. This “intense work” is based on a “state of absolute concentration” and the maximum structuring of one’s day.
“I’m not here to denigrate everything and say that the awful capitalism wants to destroy us and exploit us to the maximum, not at all, specifies Mr. Thomas. Above all, I want to show that terms that had a meaning at the start are now overused. THE lean management originally, in Japan, was to avoid waste. Now, in Europe, it’s the idea of doing more with less. »
Similarly, the word “collaborator” replaced “employee”, which had driven out “craftsman” or “employee”. At Walmart, business newspeak refers to clerks and cashiers as associates.
Mr. Thomas continues with “agility”. Agile methods in IT circles had a precise meaning of solving problems by iteration in the 1990s. Today, it is synonymous with flexibility, but also sometimes with precariousness.
So it’s not just English words in office slang. There is also “frugal innovation”, “collective intelligence” and even “ikigai”, a Japanese concept designating the search for balance to restore meaning to one’s life. Only, four times out of five, the chronicle exposes and explains a term borrowed from American management.
“Most of the time, the model comes from Silicon Valley,” says the reporter. It infuses in French business schools, where today the courses are given almost entirely in English. It is even more pernicious in the world of start-up French. From their birth, they wanted so much to model themselves on American companies that they borrowed their vocabulary and prepared the ground for a possible internationalization. »
We therefore find ourselves with “the code of a caste, a sort of secret language to differentiate ourselves”, says its decryptor. ” networking means “networking” and ” greenhushing is needed rather than the words “ecosilence” or “green silence”.
chief happiness officer
The portraitist of this group with gibberish adds that he was immediately attracted by “the laughable side” of this fashion. “Hearing French people using English words with a French accent all day long is ridiculous. For the majority of the French population, moreover, it is ridiculous. This vocabulary is closely associated with white-collar workers, executives, an office world, hence the choice to entitle the column “Office slang” and not to use “jargon”. White collar slang doesn’t really sound like slang, but the paradox is still interesting. »
This idiom also becomes the symptom of the “operational decision-making” mode of reproduction and of the “digital technocratization” of current society, as certain sociologists put it in their own jargon. Human resources “manage employees” with hollow concepts borrowed from personal growth gurus for the benefit of investors…
Mr. Thomas talks about the job title “ chief happiness officer », which concentrates this pure sugar trend. “This wellness leader is here to build a surface smile. The stains themselves are not necessarily exciting, so we get around the problem with a varnish cool, a juice bar. There is a grip of vocabulary on the reality of work. We propose a discourse on meaning and well-being in business when in truth, the substance is heavy. There is a disengagement everywhere, an exhaustion, because the conditions are not good. »
France has spent the last few months tearing each other apart over the issue of pension reform, perhaps because the work itself does not satisfy, many years before 60, 62 or 64 years old. Surveys show that the extension of market logic and new managerial standards to increase performance and profitability are degrading the ability to do one’s job well and to find pleasure, even meaning, in it.
A horse for the kingdom
All that said, the young colleague from the World addresses all these deep questions with a touch of lightness, an offbeat tone, an assumed irony. “Humour is essential and it is very difficult not to laugh at certain words. However, for each column, I receive offended messages from those I call Linkedln influencers. This network gives the impression that everyone speaks this jargon of benevolence where everyone congratulates each other permanently. »
Come on, one last example: equicoaching “, which designates “accompaniment to change by a coach, assisted by a horse,” according to the One RH website. In his column last October, Jules Thomas explains that the practice invented in the 1990s for the leaders of the American branch of VW was imported into France for the benefit of several major brands, including LVMH and Total.
“By spending time with a horse, the executive is supposed to become aware of how he treats his employees. If you pamper the horse, it does not move; if you are violent, he flees. With the employee, it would be the same. This thing is very serious with its certification label to reinforce the soft skills… sorry, the behavioral skills of managers. I have met people who have done these courses and who have told me that it has changed their lives. Seen from the outside, it’s scary and we say to ourselves: but in what world do we live? »