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ATMI announces org changes, fine-tunes boilerplate cliches |
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Sep 07, 2007 at 11:11 AM |
ATMI announced today that it has shaken things up on the ol' org chart.
The materials company has promoted/reassigned a Tod and a Tim and other exec and senior VPs, jiggering things to "further increase customer focus and maximize top- and bottom-line performance."
Say what? "Increase customer focus" from what level to what level? From 20/200 vision to 20/20 or what? Are we talking depth of focus or spot focus? What was out of focus before? And who's focus is it anyway, ATMI's or the customer's? As for maximizing the financial performance, what was the company doing before? Certainly not minimizing performance, so I guess they weren't maximizing it enough. (But then it's never enough, is it? Ah, capitalism.)
That wording was not the last of a string of straight-up corpo-speak boilerplate and cliches in ATMI's press release.
CEO Doug Neugold goes on...and on: "This new organizational structure will allow us to better execute on existing opportunities, further develop strategic capabilities, and accelerate progress against our mid- to long-term objectives. We will be replacing our current business unit structure with a more functional-based organization."
Isn't "executing on existing opportunities" the same as "taking care of business on a daily basis"? Isn't the further development of "strategic capabilities" also known as "investing in our company's future"?
As for "accelerate progress against our mid- to long-term objectives," ouch! How does one "accelerate progress," i.e., make progress faster? Run, Lola, run! Why the use of "against"? I'm not sure what this phrase means, except to say "we plan to achieve our goals more quickly."
And that last sentence about having a "more functional-based organization...." I know there are many dysfunctional organizations out there (was ATMI one of those?), but isn't "function" pretty much synonymous with "structure" in a corporation and its units? Does this mean that there will be another few layers of "function" (AKA busywork) added to the workload of ATMI employees, or actually a few layers will be removed, making for a leaner org? Arrggh!
The next paragraph in the PR contains one of the hoariest of current corpo-speak cliches (and one I've been guilty of using, although lately with tongue in cheek): "The changes will enable more focused and comprehensive interactions with customers.... They will also further intensify our efforts to expand ATMI's revenue base by leveraging our core competencies within the semiconductor and adjacent markets...."
These days, claiming one is leveraging ye olde core competencies to find new ways to make money is kind of like saying you're breathing. Everyone's doing it, and if they aren't, they're gasping for air. Isn't it time to come up with a new "lever" (or pulley) and some other term, perhaps "strong expertise and deep knowledge"? And what about the "core and noncore incompetencies"? Funny how you never hear about them.
Hopefully, ATMI will transcend cliche and enlighten us about what's really going on with the company and its customers when it convenes its analyst day November 12. In the meantime, add this most recent announcement to the "egregiously worded PR" file.
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