The trite and true
TOM MAST Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Sunday, January 11, 2009 12:00 am
You gotta love the language of sports. Coaches and players are masters of the trite, the tired and the terrible.
"We lost our focus," the coach said, after his squad was shellacked by the Hooterville Dragons 87-15. "We didn't take it one game at a time."
Language of a similar sort has crept into business.
The term "going forward" is often accompanied by a pep talk about how a firm will surely be solvent soon, after losing most of the stockholders' money in the fourth quarter.
"Downsizing" is a dandy, as in, "Without a gigantic bailout out, the Big Three Detroit automakers will be downsizing out of existence." Does anyone affected by such economic carnage feel better because they weren't laid off?
Another comes up when management drops the axe and someone exits the company to "spend more time with the family," or to "pursue other opportunities." You mean like becoming a fry cook at a flapjack joint?
Then there's the "paradigm shift." This is a development so revolutionary, the world will never be the same. The last such event was the rise of the Internet. It never applies to investment advice or work-out videos.
These days, the term "challenging environment" is turning up more. A rough translation for this is, "Not even the U.S. Mint could make money in this lousy economy."
Sometimes, sports lingo actually becomes business speak: "The Team (in this case, meaning the employees) needs to step it up a notch and take their game to the next level."
A "game changer" is a kind of lesser "paradigm shift" within a sports context. The game changer is also used in business, but you'll never hear a coach exclaim, "The play of our defense in the third quarter was a real paradigm shift!"
Such borrowing from sports probably makes sense. Both business and sports are competitive endeavors, and both have established goals. The play also is frequently measured in quarters.
But while winning by a single point is good enough for a football team, breaking even by only a buck doesn't bode well for a business, so such crossover-lingo has its limits.
Business Editor Tom Mast can be reached at tom.mast@trib.com, or call 307-266-0574.