[coldtea]

>Err... catalyzing a paradigm change makes perfect sense to me. I think Thomas Kuhn might have used that in his book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions".

And I think he wouldn't have touched that phrase with a barge pole.

>Management speak is just a jargon.

No. Jargon comes out of necessity and field-specific needs.

Management speak comes out of the desire to unecessarily dress-up bullshit.

[dekhn]

To catalyze something means to speed it up.

So catalyzing a paradigm change means to make it happen faster.

I don't see the problem with this. Could you be more specific?

[coldtea]

>To catalyze something means to speed it up. (...) I don't see the problem with this. Could you be more specific?

The problem with this is that "make it happen faster" is already clear and sufficient.

People understand it -- including people who don't have an idea what "catalyst" means (for me it's a totally transparent word, as its origin and etymology come from my language. YMMV).

If you want to dress it up to make it sound more impressive, then you're not communicating effectively.

And if you include 3-4 other unecessary buzzwords in the same sentense you're just name-dropping words.

"I saw a very puissant pismire lifting 100 times its weight in a sweven yesterday". Do you see anything wrong with this sentense?

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pismire http://www.thefreedictionary.com/puissant http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sweven

(Except if you're a chemist, and you use the word "catalyst" as it applies to your terminology)

[mattmcknight]

"The problem with this is that "make it happen faster" is already clear and sufficient."

I disagree. Catalyze is more succinct. In addition, to catalyze has the connotation of making change happen via the injection of a catalyst, thus connecting the agent of change with the change it brings. It's a better word.

Catalyst is not a difficult vocabulary word, nor a particularly uncommon word. Compare it's frequency to the words you used: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=catalyst%2C+pui...

[tedks]

>The problem with this is that "make it happen faster" is already clear and sufficient.

Do you only read Simple English wikipedia? It's very clear and sufficient.

[jrockway]

Simple English Wikipedia sacrifices nuance to fit to its constrained lexicon. It is possible to explain pretty much anything using only 1000 words (and probably fewer), but it's going to be awkward because language is more than just conveying ideas through words. Words also have sounds and rhythm and evoke different images and emotions beyond their literal dictionary definition. For that reason, Simple English Wikipedia fails at being literature, but succeeds in communicating ideas to people that don't speak English. Since the latter is its goal, it's successful. But it's not something to imitate if you desire to communicate rather than just describe.

And, some phrases are simply used too often by people trying to sound smart when they really have nothing to say. There is nothing wrong with catalyzing synergy, but because so many people have applied those words when they had nothing to say, the phrase has gradually become meaningless. Omit meaningless words.

[tomkarlo]

Management is itself a field, with its own jargon. You can have good management and poor management (just as you can have good engineering or poor management) but don't pretend that the use or absence of "management jargon" is somehow intrinsically connected to that.

Managers have their jargon because they often trade in abstract concepts (Plan of Record, Resources, Asks, Action Items, OKRs) peculiar to their trade that are ripe for shorthanding, which is pretty similar to the reason you see it in other fields.