Nobody needs telling that offices today are infested with buzz-words, jargon and what the Oxford Guide to English Usage elegantly terms "modish and inflated diction". It has become something of a joke, with its own column ("Birtspeak") in Private Eye. Most of us are aware of it, even if we occasionally lapse into expressions as "ball-park figure", "market-oriented", "raise the profile" and "the bottom line".
So this article is not another general side-swipe at office cliches. It is a more specific complaint, about just four words, not widely recognised as cliches, but which are over-used, especially in government and commercial organisations, to the point where they have become a barrier to clear and effective communication. In drawing attention to them, I hope to enlist readers' support in curbing their use.
Challenge
Time was when challenges were things issued to each other by knights. Life was simpler then. In more recent times the word became a favourite among candidates at interviews, as in "I see this job as a challenge".
Lately it has got out of hand. Understandably, people in responsible jobs do not want to sound defeatist, but the result is that they tend to describe any difficulty, however intractable, as a "challenge". The little terror who disrupts an orderly classroom is displaying "challenging behaviour". There is even a London council which has taken to referring to itself in recruitment advertisements as "a challenging Borough", though whom it challenges, and to what, is not specified.
We should not be so wary of saying what we mean. When French defences collapsed in 1940, Churchill did not say: "Intelligence reports indicate a challenging situation in western Europe"; he said: "The news from France is very bad." When Apollo 13 was crippled by an explosion, Jim Lovell simply repoted: "Houston, we have a problem."
Deliver
Until recently services could be given, provided or organised, and policies could be implemented, introduced, carried out, or carried through. Now they are almost invariably "delivered".
Whoever saddled us with this term probably wanted to emphasise that a service or policy must reach the people it is intended for. But I suspect that many people who use it are unconscious of any metaphorical intention. It is therefore liable to be used nonsensically. I wince when I read a job description which invites the post-holder to deliver an objective. Nobody can do this. Delivery implies movement and an objective is a fixed point. Similarly, nobody, except an angelic messenger, can deliver a vision (the correct verb is "realise", or at a pinch, "achieve").
It is time this word was returned to sender.
Address
Like "deliver", it is a word with a long and respectable history and a variety of meanings. But, as with "deliver", one meaning has become too fashionable and has supplanted a range of more precise words. Once a problem or question or issue could be considered, tackled, worked on, dealt with, responded to, or given up as hopeless. Now it is almost always "addressed". This usage has a weasel quality: to say "The issue is being addressed" sounds confident, but doesn't actually commit you to doing anything. Not surprisingly, it is much used by politicians.
I recommend a moratorium, during which the word is applied only to envelopes, meetings, and people with titles.
Objective
It used to mean the point to which a military operation was directed. I think it was Peter Drucker who popularised the word as a management term. But I am sure he never intended it to become just an impressive synonym for "aim", "object", "target", "function" or "purpose". Let us either redefine it properly or save ourselves a syllable and drop it.
Do you feel challenged to deliver an objective? Or is your objective to address a challenge? In either case, the time has come to review your choice of words.