Bendable Learnings
by Don Watson
management, humour ?
copyright 2009
read in January 2014
rated 7 / 10: well worth reading
... or possibly, rated towards 6: read to pass the time. It's a book to be sampled rather than read. A whole lot of examples of convoluted and inscrutable English.
With, unfortunately, not enough linking material from Watson, the "author".
A grab bag of incomprehensibility. Loosely grouped. But so what ? What is the point of this book ? What has the author added, by publishing all this material ?
If the simple aim is to poke fun then a far thinner book would have been enough. If it is a warning then it needs to highlight the negative results of this bureaucratic and academic verbiage.
But no. There is just enough linking material to say, this is rubbish... And if you don't understand why, then the message is lost.
Perhaps Watson could select less examples -- and attempt to rewrite them in plain English ? Because that would be a real challenge ! And, perhaps, a useful lesson to the original authors... and to the rest of us.
Enough of the general. Back to the specific selections...
I read them... and I recognize them...
Not exactly but in principle.
Mission statements, goals, objectives etc, etc,etc... If senior management says, write a mission statement, what do you do ? You take the generic statement provided as an example -- and add the name of your own group. You're not quite sure what a mission statement should be. All you know is, that you had better write something that your boss will approve... So you write nonsense.
Other statements are pure jargon. Sometimes it works -- that is, people in the same profession will know what you mean. Whether it is correct or not. Sometimes it does not work. Possibly because the latest -- essential -- buzzword has never been clearly defined. But if you do not use the accepted jargon -- your fellow professionals will assume that you know nothing.
Then there is simple complexity... You start with a simple statement. Realize that it could be misunderstood... either deliberately or accidentally. So you expand the sentence, to include explanation. And all of a sudden, your simple statement has become a convoluted and incomprehensible example in a book of examples of poorly written English.
I have some sympathy for the original authors of Watson's examples. Not enough sympathy to deny that they should do better. But it does not help to hold up an example and say, This is bad hahaha !
Watson has found the problem. But what is he doing to solve it ?!
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Problems ? Solved
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