{"id":6941,"date":"2017-07-20T17:31:54","date_gmt":"2017-07-20T22:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/?p=6941"},"modified":"2017-08-02T21:12:55","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T02:12:55","slug":"corporate-speak-name-those-tunes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/corporate-speak-name-those-tunes\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporate Speak: Name Those Tunes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><\/center>Two new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/groupthink\/2012\/01\/26\/the-most-annoying-pretentious-and-useless-business-jargon\/#649392622eea\" target=\"_blank\">corporate speak<\/a>-inspired songs made their way onto the new record, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/music\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Hey Karma&#8221;<\/a>. Here&#8217;s the story behind them.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always had a techy day job that centers around writing and communicating. It pays the bills and is more often than not pretty interesting. Two years ago, I went on holiday to a songwriting retreat in Idaho. I spent a week with rivers, trees, other artists&#8230;and went home with seven new songs. (Five were &#8220;keepers&#8221;.)<\/p>\n<p>En route for home, I had time to kill in the Boise airport, so I did a quick glance at work email, to see what I missed. Words like &#8220;paradigm,&#8221; &#8220;ideate,&#8221; and &#8220;align&#8221; spilled out in my inbox. Yup, I was going back to the real world. I said, \u201cI need to write about this\u201d and ended up with this he-said, she-said tune called \u201cBest of Breed Romance\u201d:<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Cic_CvmaX4s?list=PL-AB6VYIK4deLEGTKJ7AeIgHLfgq8H8Nl\" width=\"420\" height=\"236\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/center>See, I was working for a big company at the time. No names (but it\u2019s in my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/mhgaither\" target=\"_blank\">LinkedIn profile<\/a> if you&#8217;re that curious). Lots of smart people there, and I was a grateful for a 16-year run at the place, but did they like their big silly\u00a0words. I remember one day at a meeting when a Director used the word &#8220;ecosystem&#8221; 12 times in ten-minute presentation. (I&#8217;m not kidding. I counted. It kept me awake.) That one moment probably led to the song above. You take inspiration anywhere you find it.<\/p>\n<p>The next year, layoffs started happening. Wait. Strike that. We don\u2019t use the word \u201clayoff\u201d anymore. We\u2019re \u201creorg\u2019d,\u201d \u201cdownsized,\u201d or as my pals in the UK tell me, \u201cmade redundant\u201d. I thought: That happy couple from \u201cBest of Breed Romance?\u201d They need to break up.<\/p>\n<p><center><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/p-PUKMmeJYE?list=PL88rnaXiHoXC6GIkVbWPMqzaFbeNMzNBI\" width=\"420\" height=\"236\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/center>Later that same year, I was reorg\u2019d. Gotta admit I took more than a little pleasure in recording \u201cIt\u2019s Nothing Personal (The Layoff Song)\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Epilogue<\/strong>: These days I&#8217;m working for a VERY cool, smaller\u00a0company that uses real words with people who are wonderful communicators. No one&#8217;s asked me to align to a new paradigm or engage in an end-to-end holistic ideation since I was hired. There&#8217;s hope.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Want to Pick Up a Copy of These?<br \/>\n<\/strong>Both of these songs are on the new \u201cHey Karma\u201d record, available on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/music\/\" target=\"_blank\">my web site<\/a>, on <a href=\"https:\/\/store.cdbaby.com\/cd\/michaelgaither2\" target=\"_blank\">CD Baby<\/a>, and in <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/album\/hey-karma\/id1227896509\" target=\"_blank\">iTunes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.michaelgaither.com%2Fhome%2Fcorporate-speak-name-those-tunes%2F&amp;layout=standard&amp;&amp;width=800&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:800px;height:30px;margin-top:5px;\"><\/iframe>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two new corporate speak-inspired songs made their way onto the new record, &#8220;Hey Karma&#8221;. Here&#8217;s the story behind them. I&#8217;ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,25,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-hey-karma","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6941"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6960,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6941\/revisions\/6960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}