Leverage

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 | Douchewords

“Leverage” is douchespeak for “I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, but I’m afraid I’ll get fired if anyone finds out.”

Let’s look at some (sadly real-life) examples:

• This system will leverage our R&D experience.
• We need to leverage our community.
• Can we leverage this particular server?
• Here’s some analyst reports we can leverage.

The common thread here is a lack of how any “leveraging” might take place. The speaker (or writer) feels that they’re off the hook because they’ve suggested the “leverage”. Another job well done – time for a sneaky 11 o’clock donut.

Unfortunately, back in the real world, no-one is any nearer to an actual, concrete solution. The word “leverage” (and the sentence containing it) doesn’t form a meaningful part of a conversation.

As soon as a conversation takes place, the word “leverage” becomes redundant because there are better words to use. To have any actual impact, you need to describe what you’re actually going to do. Let’s rewrite the above:

• This system makes use of our R&D experience to increase system performance.
• We need to encourage our community to participate by providing better feedback mechanisms.
• Can we use this particular server to host the test environment?
• Here’s some analyst reports which may help your decision on which vendor to use.

Yes, the sentences are longer, but they’re also purposeful. They provide questions, or topics for progressive discussion:

• How much has performance increased?
• What are the weaknesses in current feedback mechanisms? What would actively encourage people?
• Does the server have the right OS installed?
• What do the analysts actually say about the vendors?

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all the examples at the top of this post use the word incorrectly. Go look at the dictionary definition… No, go on, go and read it. I’ll wait.

See? Wrong.

English has a long and colourful history of subverting words and adding new meanings. But in most cases, those changes improve the language, providing a needed meaning which we didn’t have before at the cost of a word with multiple synonyms.

The douchespeak version of “leverage”, on the other hand, is vastly inferior to a host of more meaningful words, while devaluing the rather important primary meaning it has in the financial world.

If you’re talking finance, go ahead and “leverage” all you need to. If you’re talking anything else, well, I’ll be imagining one thing:

My foot, leveraged up your ass.

Tags: douchespeak, leverage, work-dodgers, wrong

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