Dig That Shine..

 

Farewell to the relevance of those arcane $500.words finally at once given dollar value by SAT prep courses nationwide.  As functioning, practical grownups we need words that serve our immediate business and personal needs with top efficacy.  We don’t need synonyms.  What we need are euphemisms.

There is no such category or section of challenge on the SAT exam to this day, far as I know.  And if you really want to go all To Sir With Love, and use public education as a tool for life prep, clearly that’s the category needed.  Euphemistic verbosity is very much an elite art, held by only the most clever, and not necessarily the most well-read. At its most effective, it parlays as amusing, well-taken, and if skillful, candidly accepted by even the most uncooperative.  But amidst a cottage industry of aptitude exams, one principal is tacitly understood: You can’t teach it.

The unguarded science known as “AI” hasn’t yet really been put to it either, for just that reason.  Most humans don’t yet know how to do it.  Verbiage Is kind of a dangerous science. Do it wrong, and you’ve insulted and incited half the population. Do it right, and you’ve accomplished nothing but disrespect.  Do it effectively, and you’ve suddenly got a battery of enemies. 

Somewhere in the last decade or more however, the Secret Tribunal of Word Developers, trusted with the direct injection of new terms and pledges into our daily working societal vocabulary, people who likely scored no more than a laughable 1100 or less on their SATs when Jagged Little Pill was on sale at the Virgin Megastore, smashed a rock of a new word into our working lives.  It’s a euphemism, to be sure, and a word as common as a $100 prize winner on You Bet Your Life.

That word is transparent.

Hell, I remember that word.  If you’re an old enough Gen-X’er, it was the key selling point of Future floor wax, in that ubiquitous commercial you kept seeing as a first-grader on your aunt’s living room Zenith during the breaks in Days Of Our Lives.  The kid in the Judo gear would be stomping on an acrylic floor you could see through, thanks to that magic, windshield-clear syrup. Transparent was the take-away word purred by the lady narrator. 

Suddenly, a word life-long associated with the merits of Windex now defines a behavior, a personal practice, immediately representative of one’s values.  What a phenomenal invention.  One of those “What took them so long to come up with something so simple..?!” creations.

The term was developed for use on the professional front.  It has yet to really transcend into the intimately personal realm, and there’s good reason for that. While It seems to serve the immediate needs of the professional interoffice proscenium, as far as anything personally communicative, it’s in no way potent enough.

The current day term transparent as we know it thus far, meets a conveniently polite standard in fulfilling a very immediate need.  Corporate and business settings are composed on almost any level, of staffs of people.  Within those staffs are enclosed teams of two or more, within which strategies are composed and executed, followed in practice.  Multiply that by a few office floors and you’ve got yourself a small nation of interworking strategies composed and controlled by various leaders. Everything works with quiet efficiency, a calming purr that moves to the beat of the office Muzak.  Then, all of a sudden, on any given, unassuming day, something in the chain fractures.  A piece of information is needed about something that happened four months ago.  Documentation is missing.  What the hell happened..?! Zoom Meeting in 20 Minutes..!

Suddenly, the team circle has a “Contra-gate” on their hands. Maybe.  That’s if they can’t get to the innocent bottom of all this.  But what the young, crew-necked corporate leaders on the Zoom meeting are going to implore of all participants first and foremost, is that they be absolutely transparent in their responses and directives here.  What do those handsome sweater models mean..?

Defined, transparency entails full accuracy.  Precision in detailed information.  As well, you’re expected to tell everything.  Leave no detail out.  It’s your golden opportunity to disparage the whole thing by boring the room to smithereens like Edith Bunker, describing every second of that mysterious day from the breakfast you ate to the towel you chose to use in the shower.  But you’d better not be that clever.  This whole meeting wouldn’t have been called if someone in the building hadn’t royally f$*&d up to begin with.

And in corporate practice, as the science effectively goes, the tacitly achieved result of that Zoom meeting Is a successfully logged company effort to confront, resolve and repair the situation.  The shattered antique mirror certainly won’t be glued back together and made brand new.  In fact, in a pooled concentration of transparency, there will be no revelation, admitted or otherwise as to how that mirror got mysteriously shattered. But the resolve to offer maybe a nice new hand mirror or compact will be the conclusive and winning handover, made possible only by the dedicated effort of a very inventive team, whose pronounced dedication to transparency makes this delicate process possible.

That whole flowchart proves just how ignorant this old-schooler probably is with regard to this magical new term he’s yet to fully embrace as such.  I seem to remember a perfectly good word that defined a practice dictated out of every loudly-spoken mouth of every teacher and grownup around me in my sound upbringing. Maybe you remember it as well.  It was the word honest.

If I didn’t know better, and clearly I don’t, it would seem as though somewhere, ten years into the new Millenium, business keepers of sorts found the desperate need to re-instill some new-age embrace of this principle to team members, staffers, co-workers and employees all, a kind of re-leveling of personal practice just to maintain our sense of gravity, and not float off into some dreamy 1980s Wall Street freedom of appropriation.  What was the takeaway of the 80’s culture, anyway..? The so-called “bubble” of the 90s only kind of serviced it a little more, and even though neckties seemed to go the way of hula hoops about twenty years ago, the geometric pattern of tailored suits was restored, and with it came this need for restored order, something a brand new, well younger generation of office residents with laptops and opaque plate glass walls and doors would have to learn how to command.  New culture, new word..!

But it is in fact a new definition entirely.  No one is replacing the word honesty, which is what we continue to teach our children daily, as a value and practice.  Transparency is a practice and value of intercorporate convenience, and as such, requires a level of achieved skill and candor, decision making and temperance.  In execution upon the given situation at hand to be addressed, one needs to consider just what information is relevant, how best to deliver, and what in fact needs not be delivered, as existent as that reality might be.  It’s about one’s intention, if not so much an exact police report on the incident itself.  It’s not so much the facts, as the presentation, and the well-meant thought and extremely careful and mature consideration that counts.  While few Americans never came to terms with the aftermath of Watergate, it’s clear that the remaining functional committees of Washington D.C. and the appointees of the suddenly promoted, and forgiving President seemed to have no problem with it.  How could they…? We’ve got a job to do and a business to get on with.  Any fool can see that.

Clearly, the situation remains one transparent.

 

Noah F.