Words that mean nothing

psychology politics

The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics is on and OH MY GOD. To say that they don’t half wang on is an insult to the idea of wangs. Or on. Or something. It’s a tedious collection of people giving “inspiring” speeches about harmony, strength, courage, and humanity.

A similar theme

All of them seem to hit the same note which is basically a horrible, sickly ode to togetherness, and the notion that the real strength is in being “united” and having “courage” and “spirit” to believe in ourselves.

Obviously I’m deeply cynical and I’m sure if you actually listened to all of the words…actually, even then I think I’d find the whole thing tedious and asinine.

Why? Why does this happen? Why do so many people get up and give what I’d call “the Eurovision” speech?

Matching the brief

One reason: people feel like they have to say something but they know it can’t be controversial. Nobody wants to say anything that could be offensive to anybody. And yet they still think they have to say something and they would like it to sound profound and worth listening to.

So if you can only say things that are deeply conforming and not in the least bit offensive, and have to appeal to multiple different countries, maybe all you’re left with is bland platitudes. And so that’s what everybody says, on repeat. Strength through unity. Dare to be strong, and have courage to tolerate and celebrate our differences. Spread the hope and joy through togetherness.

I feel sick.

Company mission statements

I think company mission statements often fall into exactly this trap. I don’t want to pick on any one company but depressingly, when it comes to principles or missions statements or whatever, they’re all broadly the same:

  • Collaboration (or teamwork, or some other way of saying ‘work with other people’)
  • Care (or quality, or some way of saying ‘do something good’)
  • Speed
  • Impact

There are probably a few more, but by-and-large I’m sure you’ll recognise these as the general ‘flavour’ of principles that are often presented as ground-breaking and unique. Again, most companies want people to behave in broadly the same way, and are appealing to a global audience.

Perhaps the better question is why companies feel the need to create their own ‘principles’? Is it just one of those things you have to do?

Better mission statements

I think it was Paul Graham who talked about this, and said that he likes mission statements/principles only if you could reasonably take the opposing side. “Move fast and break things” makes sense as a principle because you could reasonably say “precision matters” or “quality above all” and that’d be a sensible principle.

Whoever it was, I love ignoring any principle that doesn’t fit that mould, and hyper-fixating on any that does. When I worked for Mars, one of their principles was “mutuality” (the rest were unnoteworthy) - they didn’t want their staff to do something that would only benefit Mars. They said that if nobody else was benefitting, then it might produce a short-term win but they were a long-term company and so they believed in mutuality.

The next company I worked for operated in a completely different way, and so I got to see a great example of how those two approaches create two very different companies.

Spotify had ‘playful’ and that was kind of OK, I guess. I think it might have been Nabeel S. Qureshi who said that Palantir’s were designed to put people off, and that’s another framing I like. Small companies can afford to put people off working for them, but if you’re trying to find what connects 100,000 people across the globe…you’re probably going to have to rely on meaningless platitudes again.

Courage (or lack thereof)

My take is that most pretty senior people are pretty smart - they know that they’re repeating asinine drivel. The problem is that by not doing so, they’re turning it into a thing. Taking a stand takes effort - it burns up cognitive load and political capital.

Giving a silly speech takes very little effort, and even if you don’t believe in whatever you’re saying, at least you’re not having to waste effort.

At least in the US, I think the tide has turned somewhat and authenticity and ‘vice-signalling’ is becoming more normal - people are happier to show their real personality. In Europe, I don’t think we’re really there yet - at least in these large European or international bodies, we’ll still favour a painfully bland speech over any kind of personality.

The End

The speeches are still going on and they make me deeply uncomfortable. I like to pride myself on being able to understand English fairly well, and so when I hear long speeches that I can’t really understand, it irks me. That’s why I don’t like a lot of heavily theoretical psychological papers.

Fortunately, the speeches were broken up by a rousing chorus of Nessun Dorma. Couldn’t they just have had that, without the speeches? What could be more fitting? Why tell us about power when you could just show us?

Really I should just turn it off.