IFAS Matters - May 2012 - Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

IFAS Matters - May 2012

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Jack Payne

The Cacophony of Meaningless Drivel

Sometimes my brain hurts from being overrun with hollow words. In a world obsessed with terminology about excelling in leadership and best practices, the lingo-list of ingredients for success recipes keeps getting longer. Indeed, my hard drive is filling up with a barrage of overworked principles buttressed by flimsy pillars of excellence, and it’s bursting at the seams with ho-hum core values, core competencies and credos.

Take mission and vision statements. Today they’re deemed requisite for every business or institutional endeavor. I even recently saw one in a pizza parlor (There’s actually a website that fabricates mission statements for all kinds of businesses, including restaurants.).

Ubiquitous and populating the landscape like Coca-Cola product placements, well-meaning business folks put forth so much energy and so many words toward their mission/vision/values statements that result in such little essence. Imagine if they could be really important, memorable, clear and motivating ideas that make the difference between coming into work every day inspired or just showing up?
So when I stumbled upon Google’s “Ten things we know to be true,” I had an unexpected epiphany. It was on their search page at the bottom, and labeled, “About Google.” Curious, I clicked the link to read:

“#1: Focus on the user and all else will follow.”

I was captivated. It seemed like this simple edict contained all of the focus, might and intrinsic nature of IFAS. Although it was Google’s business philosophy, it embodied the best properties of IFAS in a concentrated form. I went on to read the other nine “truths” and found them to be fairly applicable to IFAS as well, reminding me of the power of a few, well-chosen words to drown out the cacophony of meaningless drivel.

Read: Google’s “Ten things we know to be true.”

-Jack