Synergy: A big firm swallows a small one
by admin
Synergy: A big firm swallows a small one. To save the victim's blushes, the new boss presents the deal as a willing collaboration of equals that benefits both - "synergy". Hard to avoid in the mouths of predatory suits but, oddly, it has the longest history of any boardroom term of art. The 16th-century Protestant reformer Melanchthon used it for the doctrine of human will acting in tandem with the Holy Spirit to achieve redemption.
So Synergy, Mr CEO, not only boosts the bottom line; it can also send you straight up that stairway to heaven Synergy: A big firm swallows a small one. To save the victim's blushes, the new boss presents the deal as a willing collaboration of equals that benefits both - "synergy". Hard to avoid in the mouths of predatory suits but, oddly, it has the longest history of any boardroom term of art. The 16th-century Protestant reformer Melanchthon used it for the doctrine of human will acting in tandem with the Holy Spirit to achieve redemption. So Synergy, Mr CEO, not only boosts the bottom line; it can also send you straight up that stairway to heaven. Client-focused: Once upon a time, only hookers, lawyers and the like had clients. Then, in the touchy-feely age of welfare cuts and soothing bromides to disguise them, everyone at the sharp end of officialdom turned into one. Benefit claimants, addicts in rehab, ex-cons on probation: all suddenly became clients.
Agencies could happily "focus" on their "needs" even if they had no staff to deliver proper services. The stitched-up kids who go to their judicial deaths in America's South haven't yet become "clients" of the electric chair, but it can only be a matter of time.BENCHMARK: A classic case of a chunk of corporate-speak that once referred to actual skills. Surveyors used the "benchmark" on a stone post, or other fixed feature, as a guide for making their measurements. Later, systems analysts gave it another concrete application: a standard program that allowed comparison between the performance of one computer and another. Now execs who don't reach the right benchmark may find themselves stranded - well, on the bench.Fast track: Watch out for this one: it conjures up the sleek, streamlined world of athletics or motor-racing, with the speedy élite purring ahead of the also-rans. In fact, the phrase first alluded to a more horizontal form of locomotion. US prostitutes once worked on certain streets in town: the "fast track" (where the fast ladies hung out, one assumes).
Come to think of it, maybe the original meaning fits the life of company high-flyers more neatly than they might imagine.HARDBALL: What is it with baseball? Hardball; touching base; a ballpark figure - it must be the ultimate triumph of American capitalism that a sport no one else plays (except, weirdly, for the Cubans and Japanese) should have dumped its arcane argot all over the commercial globe. From Manchester to Melbourne, wised-up young exces will rabbit on in meetings as if the Yankees or Red Sox were playing just down the road. So let's bat this around; let's have some business nonsense that reflects our native pastimes It's time to kick this baseball jargon into touch.. Two pupils at a £15,000-a-year boarding school that preaches "warmth and care" between its students as the core of its philosophy were jailed for 18 months yesterday after savagely beating a fellow pupil in a row over a cigarette. Two pupils at a £15,000-a-year boarding school that preaches "warmth and care" between its students as the core of its philosophy were jailed for 18 months yesterday after savagely beating a fellow pupil in a row over a cigarette. Edward Whittal, 18, and Robert Cherry, 17, head-butted Christopher Lamb to the ground after coming across him smoking in the grounds of Uppingham School, Rutland, before kicking him in the face until he was "unrecognisable".
In less than two minutes, the attackers had condemned their victim to six hours of surgery to piece together his shattered face followed by months of slow recovery.A judge at Leicester Crown Court told Whittal, from Bramley, Surrey, and Cherry, of Caton, Lancashire, that the brutality of their attack, committed after they had been out drinking on the eve of their school's Speech Day, meant only a custodial sentence would send the right message to society at large.The court was told Cherry and Whittal had come across their victim at the rear of their dormitory block, a well-known area for smoking, at about 10.30pm on 28 May last year.The two attackers had been met by their parents and taken to a pub on the eve of Speech Day, the end of the academic year at Uppingham. Christopher Lamb and his parents joined Whittal and his parents at some stage during the evening before the group then split up.Cherry, a little over 6ft tall, asked Lamb for a cigarette but was refused by the bespectacled student. Cherry then started spitting at Lamb, then butted him in the face and knocked him to the ground. As Lamb fell, he grabbed at Whittal and ripped his shirt.What followed left Lamb so badly injured that when he was found by a member of staff he was taken straight to Kettering Hospital for emergency surgery.Even after metal plates had been inserted in his mouth, his ear put back together and his nose realigned, it was three months before he could fully open his mouth again to eat.The court was told that Lamb, who was not in court, has developed a phobia of being in groups for fear that his face might be touched.Sam Maines, for Whittal, said his client had been considered "a good friend" by Lamb and was at a loss to explain the motive for his actions. The court had earlier been told Whittal "went mad" after having his shirt ripped and kicked Lamb in the face 12 times.
