I think I found a job opening at McKinsey for someone who can write English

I mention in another item today how
much I liked the McKinsey interview with General McMaster. I was less taken
with another article in the same issue, about what defense companies should do to weather the current decline in
Pentagon spending. 

The article is laden with phrases that
apparently carry great meaning for the authors, but might not be so evident to
the reader. They recommend "reimagining the business portfolio." They want
executives to "redesign the talent strategy" -- but they don't say what that
means. (I am guessing it means hire different sorts of people, but who knows?
And what sort of people?) They also call for "appropriately managing
incentives." Why does no one ever call for "inappropriate" steps? Those might
be more fun, and certainly more interesting. 

Their bottom line: "History shows that
the time to act is in the depth of the downturn." My translation: "Buy low,
sell high." In other words, what you need to do is simple: Just be the Warren
Buffett of the defense industry. Any stockbroker will tell you this is easy to
say, hard to do. 

This court finds the authors guilty of
aggravated assault on the English language, and sentences them to remedial
readings of Strunk & White, and then George
Orwell's essay on clear thinking and clear writing.