Ran across this in the “strong language” section at Incisive.nu
The verb form of “leverage,” like all forms of Cheetos®, is composed mainly of hot air surrounded by a shell of creepily artificial substance. And just as Cheetos® can be mistaken for actual food and not a monstrosity produced by corn subsidies, “leverage” can be mistaken for a defensible and even useful word.
When used as a pompous synonym for “use,” it’s clearly absurd—but it is often used (particularly in press releases) to imply that one is using something to particular advantage and in an admirably clever way.
Because I now want to eat the monstrosity that is (are?) Cheetos® and, having none in the house and knowing that cheet is a bad thing to have on your keyboard, I thought the next best thing was to look for this lame-o word in our industry. (Except my work because I don’t want to be lame and hypocritical).
I kid you not. No offense to Alan D. Smith but I found this little gem when limiting my search to e-learning…
In this world of fast-paced corporate changes, development of employee skills through training is more crucial than ever to maintain sustainable competitive corporate success in the e-marketplace. The powers of the internet, intranets and extranets need to be leveraged and their appropriate software to teach the most innovative skills available need to be distributed swiftly and efficiently to enhance corporate advantage. The time and cost of implementing an e-learning management system need to be determined by companies in evolving industries as well as by companies striving to improve process and operational efficiency. This paper will outline general business conceptual models for companies to use when determining how to implement and strategically leverage e-learning processes.
So what does this say?
Use the internet/intranet/extranet to to train employees quickly and improve the process of learning. Oh, yeah, and it’s good to know what it takes to do that. This paper tells you how.
Really, this is a good exercise in writing succinctly. If you’re writing something today – an email, course content, RFP, whatever…think about what you want to say. Give them quality corn products.
Workplace Learning Today
Subscribe by Email
Connect on Facebook
Connect on LinkedIn
{ 1 trackback }
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
It seems that cheetos are rather like our Cheesy wotsits, which are a delight since they only contain about 100cals a bag! And I prefer the idea of “frolic acid” anyway. It sounds like a cheerful way to trip out!
BTW – don’t know if they do this in the US, but in the UK, instead of the old polystyrene S shapes in packaging fragile items, you can use puffed corn alternatives. They are entirely biodegradable (and incidentally edible – if tasteless)
Karyn Romeiss last blog post..Who I read update
Interesting Karyn. I had not contemplated alternate uses of Cheetos. I went googling and see that someone on a forum said they make a good fire starter. Then I found, theorangeunderground.com, a Frito-Lay NA site dedicated to random acts of Cheetos (RAOC).The site has a recipe book and videos of RAOC such as a cheese puff rolling down the street taking people down.
Kia ora Janet!
“Give them quality corn . . . “! I like it.
The alternative to the succinct is what I call “stuffing a mushroom” – one of Shirley Conran’s terms, I think.
Ka kite
from Middle-earth
Ken Allans last blog post..Reflective Practice – blogging and learning
When I went to my first mini-conference on learning and the Internet, I heard all kinds of pumped-up people talking about all kinds of pumped-up stuff.
Someone had one of the 1,532 tools for uploading PowerPoint and turning it into — web pages of PowerPoint. His term for this, used with a straight face, was “repurposing legacy content.”
That’s hype-speak for “reusing old stuff.”