I Like Things Crisp

OK, I'm pretty sure this was my word. I'm not a patient person, although I do make valiant efforts to pretend to be, I promise. How does this relate to crisp, you might ask? Well, yes I have a tendency to cook things over a high flame and they come out crispy, which I love but...the actual context for the word relates to the day job.

Over the years we've had occasion to hire various Big Name Consulting Firms (BNCF) from time to time. It's been a fascinating study to me to observe the corporate culture and BNCF-speak each team of consultants has brought.  Always different. I know we have our own DayJob-speak, everyone does...but somehow the consultantese tends to sound hifalutin and obfuscatin at times.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy working with people from BNCF and I've learned so much from them - there was one project I always joked was my MBA-equivalent because I picked up so much knowledge during the course of the work, which lasted several years. Some of my best friends in the business process improvement world either have been, or are employees of BNCF.

But especially when doing presentations, that BNCF-speak has a way of creeping into the Powerpoint slides and DayJob upper management can get pretty impatient - they're busy people and they like presenters to Get To the Point. So I was constantly pressuring the consultants and everyone on our side of the teams to be "crisp". To not use all the jargon and 100 words when ten would do, bulletized. I was so effective at this (or so much of a pest, take your pick) that by the time the BNCF left our facility, they were using the word crisp. On Powerpoint even!

And since we're doing old commercials this week, the 1980's one for the failed breakfast cereal Crispy Critters seems especially a propos.