fluff
I'm unashamedly re-posting an entire paragraph from the recent McKinsey report on The Perils of Bad Strategy, as it's the most incisive comment on the prevailing mediocrity I've read in recent weeks, and further testament to the Law of Marketing Inequality.
'A final hallmark of mediocrity and bad strategy is superficial
abstraction—a flurry of fluff—designed to mask the absence of thought.
Fluff is a restatement of the obvious, combined with a generous
sprinkling of buzzwords that masquerade as expertise. Here is a quote
from a major retail bank’s internal strategy memoranda: “Our fundamental
strategy is one of customer-centric intermediation.” Intermediation
means that the company accepts deposits and then lends out the money. In
other words, it is a bank. The buzzphrase “customer centric” could mean
that the bank competes by offering better terms and service, but an
examination of its policies does not reveal any distinction in this
regard. The phrase “customer-centric intermediation” is pure fluff.
Remove the fluff and you learn that the bank’s fundamental strategy is
being a bank'.
Simplicity of purpose over scared insights, indeed.
