With a passion of a thousand burning suns....

[kragore]

The corporate workplace is littered with the use of buzz words. It usually goes something like this:
Guy who successfully ran a business and sold it for millions of dollars writes a book.
Guy (or woman) uses a Catchy Term to summerize a complex thought.
People buy the book, and think it's God's gift to middle management.
These same people then abuse the living daylights out of Catchy Term.

There is a term being used (and abused) around my workplace right now.
I actually hate myself a little for just typing it...

"Solution Space".*

*Heaves a great, soul-clearing sigh*.

I have heard it used as such:
"Well, I'm not here to provide Solution Space."
(Then what good are you to me and why do we pay you?)

"Well, I don't want to get into Solution Space."
(Then why are we having a meeting?)

I'm a Solver. I'm paid to be a Solver. I sit here and Solve. I solve with pretty pictures, dry wit, and a great phone voice, (I've been complemented on it a number of times when dealing with vendors, actually.)

Little problems: "OMGeezies! How do we fit the 45 words of French where the 20 words of English used to be?!"

Medium sized issues: "Well, we can't afford $83 per display unit, though you've already taken the vendor over a barrel, and they would likely loose money to produce it for us. Find us a better solution."

Large Situations: "The display, now nearly throughly destroyed by an errant forklift, is stuck in Brazillian Customs, and we need it in Sao Paulo tomorrow or we loose the account. Brazil won't release it because it's missing it's fumigation documentation."

I live in Solution Space. There is no other plane of existence for me here. They eff it up, I solution it back to presentable.
"Solution Space" is metalic and bitter in my throat, because it's used as a responsibility slough. No one declares, "Ok! *clap clap* Time for Solution Space!"
No, everyone uses it to duck actually providing anything remotely useful to the Solvers, and leaves it to the Solvers to solve; those who never needed a word for the plane they move in.

Wow, it's been a Monday full of pisstivity.


*Is the Arch-nemesis to it's evil twin, "Ideation".

Comments

[cos]

Weird! I'm pretty sure I've already hear the term "solution space" used, over the years, to mean what it intuitively feels to me like it ought to mean: the metaphorical space of available options within which we should/can/will search to pick the options that make up the solution. It's the "space" made up of all the solution possibilities that meet what we're looking for at first pass, although we don't necessarily yet know which of them will actually work, or work best. But the quotations you give here don't have that meaning.

[elmer42.livejournal.com]

You need to start playing this (http://bullshitbingo.net/cards/bullshit/).

[kragore.livejournal.com]

*sobs*
They printed this out and the managers handed it out before a large meeting last year.

I wish I were kidding. Management.
- K.

Kids these days!

[bytchearse.livejournal.com]

We used to call such things "options"...

[rocksryan.livejournal.com]

you mean there's no more deprioritizing your current action items to synergize with the resolution team to shift the paradigm?

[kragore.livejournal.com]

*Flames* You're fired! ;)

[chimeramwe.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain on the corporate buzzwords front. The buzzphrase that makes me positively homicidal is "team player". Generally, the people who use that phrase are trying to guilt a worker into doing someone else's job.

It's easier to use a buzz word than to actually manage a problem, or find a solution. How sad.

[wyldehunt.livejournal.com]

Catch-phrases, unless funny, should be avoided. Granted I don't work in an office ( and oh how the Denizens should rejoice in that) but it all boils down to doing your job. Not trying to sound hip/cutting edge. Those who can, do. Those that can not make up BS phrases to piss off those that do.

Solution space... Perhaps your solution space should be anything within reach if reach involves holding a stout pair of shears... There's a solution and a defined space! Win for you, stabbity for them!