The reason business writing is so awful is because business thinking is equally awful. Faced with attempting to understand something as complex as a business, and the society it must operate in, it's of little wonder than most people fall back on simplistic models described by simplistic language, usually cribbed from other businesses also who use these same simplistic models and simplistic language. This is much easier to do than actual original thinking.
Most people working for most major corporations have little incentive to fully understand the complexity of the business they work in. All they really need to care about is knowing enough to do their job. Exceptional people, when you find them in businesses, are the ones who understand a far greater degree of the complexity of the business, and have been able to place that within the context of a greater understanding of society.
Start-ups are different, where the incentives are markedly different: if you do not understand your business and the society it operates in, then you fail. I think this explains why much of the leading-edge business thinking comes from startups.
I can only understand the adulation of 37Signals in terms of the intellectual squalor of business in general. All 37Signals has done is been competent and hand-working, and they have obviously thought long and hard about what their business is and does, and the environment it operates in. This should not be exceptional in the slightest degree, yet it is - and this speaks volumes about the low standard of thinking that permeates much of the rest of the commercial world.
Comments
The reason business writing is so awful is because business thinking is equally awful. Faced with attempting to understand something as complex as a business, and the society it must operate in, it's of little wonder than most people fall back on simplistic models described by simplistic language, usually cribbed from other businesses also who use these same simplistic models and simplistic language. This is much easier to do than actual original thinking.
Most people working for most major corporations have little incentive to fully understand the complexity of the business they work in. All they really need to care about is knowing enough to do their job. Exceptional people, when you find them in businesses, are the ones who understand a far greater degree of the complexity of the business, and have been able to place that within the context of a greater understanding of society.
Start-ups are different, where the incentives are markedly different: if you do not understand your business and the society it operates in, then you fail. I think this explains why much of the leading-edge business thinking comes from startups.
I can only understand the adulation of 37Signals in terms of the intellectual squalor of business in general. All 37Signals has done is been competent and hand-working, and they have obviously thought long and hard about what their business is and does, and the environment it operates in. This should not be exceptional in the slightest degree, yet it is - and this speaks volumes about the low standard of thinking that permeates much of the rest of the commercial world.