Don’t you just hate it when people use too many acronyms in a meeting?

I swear, the meetings I attend these days are nothing but acronyms – which makes them incredibly hard to understand.

One of the worst fields for acronym abuse is IT (Information Technology – i.e. Computers) whose name is even an acronym.  I guess there’s a clue in there somewhere.

Years ago I used to attend an IT status meeting every Friday that was just full of acronym abuse.  People were always saying things like “our SA is going into UT after we verify that RFS has the new PROC updates.”

Really?

Couldn’t you at least say our Sales Audit system will be User Tested after the Reference File System PROCedures are updated?  That may still be cryptic to some, but at least it’s using real words and I at least get that SA is a computer system, not a plant or animal genus, or a person’s initials, or a government form.  Well okay, so I can rule out government form because it’s too short – they’re more like 1040-A or something.

I swear, they need to start a twelve-step program called AA – Acronymers Anonymous.  It would start with each person standing in front of the group and saying, “IAAA,” — I Am An Acronymer.

So back to the meeting, I decided one Friday to use totally made up meaningless acronyms when I gave my update.  So I told everyone we were “finalizing the XB process for BPM at EOY,” with great authority.

Nobody questioned it (chuckle).

Which leads me to another interesting factoid I ran into that said that over 25% of executives admitted to using acronyms in meetings that they didn’t understand.

Hey, that can be serious.

For example, how do I know when someone says CYA if they mean “See Ya” or “Cover You’re A#@?”  There is a difference.

Anyhow, the use of language has devolved so deeply into meaningless acronyms I am proposing a new concept in language.  From now on let’s just draw simple pictures for things and use those as words.

Oh, that’s already been done, right.  The Egyptians did that.  They were called hieroglyphics.

Still, there are days I’m sure that this would be a step up from where we are.

Kind of a back to the future thing.

So anyhow, if we don’t want to go that route, let’s all agree right now to quit using acronyms, okay.

OK.

BCNU – J. Daniel