Empty and Misleading Communication Takes over Organizations (2020)
journals.sagepub.com
journals.sagepub.com
"Further establishing a welcoming and diverse work environment encouraging synergy and collaboration by committing to a common set of strategic goals."
That statement was unanimously received very well and nobody realized that this is basically just sarcasm in action.
Practically speaking my colleagues are all very smart (academics, PhDs all over the place) and should be able to detect bullshit bingo. At the bottom line though whether or not to go actively and motivatedly along with this ... bullshit makes a very practical difference with regard to boni. So, I don't know. Maybe it's me who's the idiot.
In short: Bullshit bingo'ing is also often quite lucrative.
What I'm impressed with is how does he get the insight into things like corporate America? Other songs like "It's all about the Pentiums" are satire, but they are accurate satire of a very early, nascent culture. It's rare that an entertainer can gain so much insight into things outside their own field.
Who says they didn’t detect it? Welcoming, diversity, strategic, collaboration - these are religious tenets that are not allowed to be questioned in any professional context. Much more likely to have been an “emperor has no clothes” situation.
The GP wants more details about how you know this wasn't the case. Your post lacks sufficient detail to determine how you arrived at the conclusion that nobody noticed your sarcasm. Without reading their minds, you couldn't know for certain, and the GP wants more details about your reasoning process.
I understood there were career gains in falling for the bullshit, but it wasn't clear it was very direct.
That certainly is buzzword soup. But I don't think its fully incoherent or bullshit. It essentially says:
Lets continue becoming more diverse. Because doing that will help us work together better and more. We will do this by all agreeing on what our goals are and agreeing that we will follow them.
The core concept is not that bullshitty. Though how exactly agreement on the goals leads to more diversity isn't quite clear. If the workshop were to be about figuring out if / how agreement on goals leads to more diversity in your specific company, then your buzzword soup happened to deliver an accidentally useful discussion.
It identifies a specific goal, a reason to reach that goal, and a way to attain that goal.
The idea could actually be wrong. Whilst "do things that work well" is a tautological statement.
> Lets continue becoming more diverse. Because doing that will help us work together better and more.
This is a tautology.
I suspect you have a blindspot here, because this specific brand of bullshit is there to please people with your belief system. To others, it's as much bullshit as a company prayer, or talk of how a SAAS startup is "changing the world", would be.
My point wasn't that I agree with the statement. My point is that the statement has clarity, and that it actually communicates an idea.
The very fact that the statement could be falsified means to me that it is not bullshit as meant in the article. That is not to say the statement is true!
I actually meant a non sequitur, but can't edit at this point.
> My point wasn't that I agree with the statement. My point is that the statement has clarity, and that it actually communicates an idea.
> The very fact that the statement could be falsified means to me that it is not bullshit as meant in the article. That is not to say the statement is true!
Yes, this is fair. I misunderstood the point you were trying to make. My apology!
Problem is that diverse doesn't really say anything, it is just a positive word. Diversity is often a bad thing, you don't want to have to build a diverse set of services for one functionality etc. Diversifying your income streams is good, but also not good since it dilutes efforts, you know there is also the "focus on your core business" mantra that goes the exact opposite.
Edit: For example, can you explain what "diverse work environment" means? Do they have no desk standards so that desks don't fit neatly together? Do they lack AC so that you get a diverse temperature over the year? Inclusive work environment would have said more, but diverse? Whatever positive meaning you attribute to it comes from your own imagination, that is the main selling point of these slogans. You don't promise anything but people still feel you said something good.
It does mean the word means totally different things to different people. That may make it a good or bad word to use in a mission statement, depending on your goals.
Not my experience at all. The more diverse, the harder it is to communicate, share values, and achieve goals. We are all products of our cultures. And some cultures are fundamentally incompatible.
Also, it is impossible for everybody to agree on the same goals. Without some sort of social/hidden pressure to comply with the dominant opinions, clearly signalled by who gets promoted/fired by the company.
In other words, I call it for what it is: BS.
I could imagine the content of workshop involving bullshitting. (Regardless of whether diversity is positive) but I don't think the title counts as bullshit.
As for me having a blindspot, I hope you see I wasn't arguing about diversity at all.
I heard somewhere at some point that for organisational values to be useful, they need to provide guidance in making decisions. They need to be trade-offs. They need to reject something in favour of something else.
So, rephrasing your bullshit bingo:
"We are now pursuing a cultural shift: we will value good attitudes and difference of opinion over efficiency. We will start to ignore some of our personal goals and instead emphasise the goals we have in common."
This is actionable. It can be used to choose a path to proceed when efficiency is pitted against diversity. It actually says something.
And yeah, it's going to suck if you don't agree. Better that than meaningless drivel.
I think you really hit the nail on the head with this one, and it's why bullshit corporate value statements proliferate with ease: they can give the appearance of action without actually requiring any hard decisions.
If a company decides to spend times on these "values" exercises, I think it's important to phrase it in what the company won't do. I.e., if a potential client is offering a million dollar contract, but requires constraints X, Y and Z, which constraints would require the company say "No, we won't do this deal, even if it means we'd lose a million bucks in revenue".
Also, the other reason I get very jaded about "corporate values", is that it's easy to say that you have all these nice, progressive values, but when the shit hits the fan and the company is under duress, I've found those values usually go out the window, replaced by the only true value, which is "make money".
In other words, the disagreement is not about the characteristics of the approaches -- it's which characteristic to prioritise. Good values help with that.
"Bullshitology" ... "disconnected from normal standards of truth such as logic, clarity and evidence".
Words to my soul.
I even have a bullshitometer, and I know how much they're in trouble or have no idea what they're doing, based on a simple k/vv ratio ;) (keywords per verbal vomit). Late or overdue projects tend to have meetings with k/vv blowing off the roof. For this I introduced the k^2/vv ratio. Hey if you're still reading, first, I feel your pain, second, might as well have fun.
Everyone believes they're a good communicator because no one is capable of judging their own writing. To hold that against them is unkind, just as it'd be unkind for someone to hold your comms against you.
Are you saying my k/vv needs to be discounted by a hidden ratio called blackhole understanding, bu, for my inability to uplift my knowledge convergence with the ephemeral business strategy?
And so it is, (k/vv)^PI/bu
Thank you sir.
Bullshit is to purposely mislead or say things that actually don't convey anything, e.g. in order not to commit to anything or to leave wriggle room for later.
That said, truth be told, in the realm of politics and media the more accurate word for bullshit is propaganda.
I noticed how deep in bullshit territory Western society is when talking to people from former communist Eastern Germany (until maybe the early 2000s), a place where self-promotion wasn't a thing, where nothing could be gained by bullshitting.
People would just plain state a realistic state of their affairs, like that they're unemployed, whereas I thought "dude you just moved here 2 weeks ago and you'll find work in no time, don't put yourself down like that". It was really eye-opening how much self-promotion is going on even among the most humble people.
And I learn it every day.
She was born in GDR and even being only 8 years old when the wall came down she inherited that from her early years and her family's way of communication (while nowadays most of her family adapted the bs style of self protection/promotion).
At first I felt pain at (to me sounding harsh) truth. But I learned to value it as a great corrective to my bs tendency.
Do people often lack self-awareness and accuse others of things for which they are equally culpable? Sure. But objective reality does, in fact, exist and therefore it is possible to identify objective standards and judge people according to their performance along them.
Maybe. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25233590-800-the-quan...
Summary of a talk by brain researcher Anil Seth: https://youtu.be/a54QHJYC8lM
Just use a log scale. It's a normal way to handle unbounded variables of the "the more you do, the more likely you'll do it more" kind.
I'll tell you what it really is: it's banal nihilism. We have this idea that nihilism is a kind of militant anti-truth, but it mainly manifests as a lack of conviction about anything altogether. When there is no fixed truth, and your survival depends on aligning to narrative, ("getting it" as they say) the abstractions you use become divorced from anything concrete that could be interpreted as a forcing function on the perceptions of the people you are speaking to.
The article underestimates the consequences of it, and we can say "ha hah, only bullshit!" but it's much, much more pernicious than that.
Someone who is enthusiastically fluent in bullshit can be trusted to be just as enthusiastic about destroying ecosystems, livelihoods, cultures, and peers, because instead of feeling existential dread at meaninglessness, they find security in it. It's difficult for most hackers to imagine that the dim agreeable affect of a middling project manager or adjunct eating lunch at their desk as barely concealing an abyss of rage and shame - one that is only relieved by tiny acts of passive sadism, but that's literally people everywhere.
The term for them was "Little Eichmanns," because the whole point of Eichmann was that nobody would ever have thought him capable of being the architect of mass atrocities, but he is the prototypical example of the "stupid and dilligent," who can be relied upon at scale to substitute compliance and bullshit jargon for meaning.
Source: banks, government, unicorns, and other institutions.
I think stupid is too strong here, and misleading even. It allows those who are clearly not stupid from realizing they can fall into the same behavior. Simply not caring is sufficient.
“I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent — their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy — they make up 90% of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent — he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief."
This "clever and lazy" group is distinct from the low cunning of the archetype I was referencing, but I stepped out of the boundaries of being charitable. Your criticism is legit, and I prefer to be held to that higher standard of kindness. Cheers.
The book argues that bullshit can be the bigger enemy of truth than straight up lying because it has no actual regard for truth at all.
> One informant told [...] that his job involved ‘characterizing the reality of a situation with any description that is necessary to make that situation more palatable to some group that matters . . . Everyone knows that it’s bullshit, but it’s accepted. This is the game’ (Jackall, 1986, p. 145)
and
> the effort they need to put in to refute bullshit is often of an order of magnitude greater than what is required to produce the bullshit in the first place (Brandolini, 2014)
So P != NP?
> "I’d like to echo XXX’s sentiments about the opportunities this organizational change creates.."
> "YYY has been integral to the growth and success of the Y team. Her tireless passion has been a source of great inspiration and she will be greatly missed - thank you so much YYY! With YYY's departure, we are very fortunate to see one of our very own exceptional leaders..."
> "You’ve heard us talk about our focus on reaccelerating our new business growth in fiscal year 2022, and while last year was challenging on many fronts, your continued focus on supporting each other, our customers, and our communities enabled us to successfully weather the storm and set ourselves up for a strong FY22 and beyond."
> "From day one, XXX has been a driving force in helping ZZZ become the unquestioned HHH industry leader and a true visionary for the future of work. Along the way she has played key leadership roles across ..."
Why shouldn’t I go in and get mine? We’ve built an economy that prizes looking competent over actual competency, and I’m just taking advantage of that. I have zero loyalty to the demons in the money pit, and in fact ripping them off is an existential coping strategy in many ways. That the system rewards this behavior is basically the point.
All I’m doing is making America work for me. This attitude is becoming pretty prevalent; I’ve started dubbing it corpo-punk since it’s a bunch of white collar workers causing chaos through deliberate incompetence and bad-faith efforts in corporate America.
It's a struggle, but I do well. Not as well as the bullshitters, but well enough to satisfy my family's needs and desires.
The peace of mind of knowing that I'm doing my part to make the world a better place is priceless, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Are you sure your take isn't just self-justification?
Not everyone is a straight white guy with a family and kids, and if you’re not, climbing the corporate ladder doesn’t happen for you if you play by the rules.
Nothing new under the sun, eh? Boys will be Boys. Until reality bites.
On a more serious note:
"Communication is improbable", Niklas Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy
"Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur", Latin phrase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundus_vult_decipi%2C_ergo_dec...
"Nothing is true, everything is permitted", Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
"Facts and events are infinitely more fragile things than axioms, discoveries, theories, which are produced by the human mind." Hannah Arendt, Truth and Politics, The New Yorker 1967
[1] http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_...
When ran on the abstract of this article:
Bullshit Index :0.7 This reeks. I bet you're a PR-Expert, Politician, Consultant or Scientist. If there is a message, it's unlikely it will reach anyone.
Bullshit Index :0.47 Something's getting a bit fishy. You probably want to sell something, or you're trying to impress somebody. It still may be an acceptable result for a scientific text.
i.e. it's assessment was pretty much exact.
Author: André Spicer
Date: June 4, 2020
Abstract: Why is bullshit so common in some organizations? Existing explanations focus on the characteristics of bullshitters, the nature of the audience, and social structural factors which encourage bullshitting. In this paper, I offer an alternative explanation: bullshitting is a social practice that organizational members engage with to become part of a speech community, to get things done in that community, and to reinforce their identity. When the practice of bullshitting works, it can gradually expand from a small group to take over an entire organization and industry. When bullshitting backfires, previously sacred concepts can become seen as empty and misleading talk.
They are all very real.
The first three are standard aspects of a linguistic/speech community.
The fourth, as described, is specific to BS communities. That said, the phenomenon of linguistic artifacts falling in and out of speech communities is a thing, and this is sort of what he is talking about (maybe if viewed at a higher level of abstraction).
I’ve done research on speech communities, and I’ve also seen ”professional BS speech communities in action. It’s a sight to see.
value prop, first moved advantage, proactive technology, paralellization. Leading edge-solutions.
These are also pretty common terms in business/technology. The fact that someone cut proposition to prop may be a bit pretentious but not bullshit. The first moved looks like it is a first mover advantage and indicates that whoever was intimidated by these terms was probably not part of the “community”.( I don’t know what to think of a linguist who writes “leading edge-solution”… and “paralellization”?)These terms are not just common but also easily understood in my opinion, even outside the specific domain and less pretentious than “practice of bullshitting” when all you want to say is “bullshitting”.
Who knows, maybe I am a bullshitter too and just in denial…
I will argue that bullshitting is triggered by a speech community with many conceptual entrepreneurs, significant amounts of noisy ignorance and permissive uncertainty. These conditions are likely to spark the language game of bullshitting
You could not make it up, writing an article about bullshit and arguing about “conceptual entrepreneurs”, “noisy ignorance”, “permissive uncertainty”, “language game”. This made my day.
I'm pretty sure the terms in the abstract are well defined recognized terms in this area of study.
"Investigating the social structural factors underlying the speech community helps us to understand the practice of bullshitting" contains jargon, but is actually telling you something. (Probably. I don't 100% understand the jargon involved, but inferring from related things I do understand, this should probably be a coherent sentence. Regardless, the words being used can convey actual information.)
Just because you can't understand something doesn't mean it's bullshit. It being bullshit means there was nothing to understand in the first place. It's conveying no meaningful information, just trying to make you think the person who said it knows what they're talking about.
If you want to try to redefine "bullshit" to mean "stuff I can't understand", then you're welcome to do so, but it's going to be about as useful as Humpty Dumpty declaring that "glory" means "a nice knock-down argument".
Could be someone telling that he will align their team’s schedule with another team’s and therefore will split delivery in multiple phases. Could be someone throwing words in excuse for their failure to deliver a strategic project. Could be some random person saying this to demonstrate what bullshit is.
There is no scenario there where information is not conveyed and that does not have anything to do with bullshitting in the end anyway. Bullshitting is not about the vocabulary but about its use as a means to conceal something by saturating the channel of communication. There is an intentionality assumption as the key defining criterion. Also the challenge that while information in a communication is “well” defined, concealment makes many assumptions about the social context of expectations for information flow.
But how does anyone get anything done in that community? It's all just words that don't mean anything; how do you cause any action that is more than just words?
Or is "getting things done" just producing words, and getting others to produce words in response?
This is Culture. Bullshitting is an example of the means to a bad ends. The ends being Culture. While a rewards system helps, the ultimate enabler is cronic denial.
Right now, "metaverse".
This is a very ironic sentence.
But no, he had to say "agile". Which by now of course has become completely meaningless, other than to mean vaguely "good". And as the article points out, a speech signal: a way of indicating "I'm an engineering director (or product evangelist, whatever) now, and one of the ways I maintain that slot in the status hierarchy is by using lingo you don't dare challenge me on, and certainly not to my face. Even though most everyone knows it's basically bullshit."
Before I read the article, I found his choice of words quite perplexing. But now it makes perfect sense.
"According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, bullshit is an informal vulgar term which means ‘to talk nonsense, especially with the intent of misleading or deceiving’. The Oxford English Dictionary defines bullshit as ‘to talk nonsense or rubbish’ and ‘to bluff one’s way through something by talking nonsense’"
And the word bluff is a more apt definition for these situations. It is essentially a bluff like in poker. Where the situation is "I might not know what I'm talking about because I'm using vague obfuscated language, but calling me out on it might point out that I don't know what I'm talking about, or it might make you look like you just didn't understand" especially if the audience in also uninformed it can be spun either way
Things which are true and everyone wishes were true = basic facts and useless pap ("one of our values is honesty")
Things which are not true but everyone wishes were true = Frankfurtian bullshit and cognitive bias
Things which are true but people wish were not true = the actual reality against which you wage war through strategy and tactics ("our customers care more about UX than security", "our competition has better IP", etc.)
Things which are not true and everyone wishes were not true = scapegoats and wasted energy (it's hard to prove a negative)
Make sure for your personal life, company, organization, whatever, that you operate as much as possible in the 3rd quadrant.
> speech community [...] conceptual entrepreneurs [...] noisy ignorance [...] permissive uncertainty [...] surface-level agreement
Am I uneducated or is the author trolling?
I find 'speech community' esp. Illustrative. These are the 'idea people' who talk all day instead of rolling their sleeves up. Not as bad as bullshitters tho.
It's also about the target audience. This is an academic paper written for an audience who will understand immediately what speech community means. A lot of the more irritating forms of corporate bullshit are distributed quite widely.
That's not a good example of "Bullshit". It's a colorful metaphor based on what we would imagine the dog feels like.
Because it works
Worst case it's meaningless filler - the equivalent of looking busy while doing nothing. Best case someone important may be impressed.
It's important to remember the downside is on not bullshitting and sticking to facts and metrics. In many orgs, neither will win friends and influence people.
Such things don't continue forever, though. Such organizations are eroding their future.
Although I'm not sure what a good replacement is. In the nonfiltered world it'd be "Because we're worrywarts".
Being excessively cautious is a mistake when the stakes are low and the benefits outweigh the risks. It is also a mistake when a decision needs to be made and no new information is going to arise. But that is contextual. It is sensible when dealing with situations where mistakes are easy to make and costly to recover from.