He's making fun of the buzzwords, not the message itself. Frankly, if you think "catalyzing paradigms" is a good way to say something, I'd recommend taking an English literature class.
A lit class isn't going to make any comment on a phrase like that, or management speak in general. Management speak is just a jargon.
Its mostly not. Jargon is specialized use of terms used to facilitate clear communication of ideas within a specific community/domain. Management speak -- at least the form that is often mocked -- is just using flowery language to conceal the absence of substance, and is pretty much the opposite of jargon.
There is a jargon of management -- an array of terms with precise meanings in the field that are either not used outside of the field or are used outside with different meanings, and which facilitate clear communication in the domain.
But that's really not what people are talking about when they are talking complaining about "management speak", which seems to be all about marketing/PR buzzwords which are used to create certain feelings while minimizing communication of clear commitments and detailed information, which are used by management either when they are acting to promote the business in marketing/PR role, or when they've been successfully snowed over by some vendor's or other industry player's marketing.
And I think he wouldn't have touched that phrase with a barge pole.
>Management speak is just a jargon.
No. Jargon comes out of necessity and field-specific needs.
Management speak comes out of the desire to unecessarily dress-up bullshit.
So catalyzing a paradigm change means to make it happen faster.
I don't see the problem with this. Could you be more specific?
The problem with this is that "make it happen faster" is already clear and sufficient.
People understand it -- including people who don't have an idea what "catalyst" means (for me it's a totally transparent word, as its origin and etymology come from my language. YMMV).
If you want to dress it up to make it sound more impressive, then you're not communicating effectively.
And if you include 3-4 other unecessary buzzwords in the same sentense you're just name-dropping words.
"I saw a very puissant pismire lifting 100 times its weight in a sweven yesterday". Do you see anything wrong with this sentense?
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pismire http://www.thefreedictionary.com/puissant http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sweven
(Except if you're a chemist, and you use the word "catalyst" as it applies to your terminology)
Do you only read Simple English wikipedia? It's very clear and sufficient.
And, some phrases are simply used too often by people trying to sound smart when they really have nothing to say. There is nothing wrong with catalyzing synergy, but because so many people have applied those words when they had nothing to say, the phrase has gradually become meaningless. Omit meaningless words.
I disagree. Catalyze is more succinct. In addition, to catalyze has the connotation of making change happen via the injection of a catalyst, thus connecting the agent of change with the change it brings. It's a better word.
Catalyst is not a difficult vocabulary word, nor a particularly uncommon word. Compare it's frequency to the words you used: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=catalyst%2C+pui...
Managers have their jargon because they often trade in abstract concepts (Plan of Record, Resources, Asks, Action Items, OKRs) peculiar to their trade that are ripe for shorthanding, which is pretty similar to the reason you see it in other fields.
In his view, it occurred over generations as adherents to older scientific models died of old age - e.g. the Copernican model replaced the Ptolomeic model because Ptolomeic astronomers went extinct.
However, the idea of an action paradigm is interesting - can you give an example of usage in that way?