Acronyms And An Epiphany
Until a few years ago, I had never owned a business or understood just why bureaucracies have so many rules, forms, and acronyms
. I've always been somewhat contemptuous of this though. My position changed, however, when I had an epiphany this morning. Our young business had quickly become a bureaucracy. We had acronyms, and we were creating more of them.An acronym is an abbreviation for a longer word or term. One of the problems acronyms pose is that sometimes only those on the inside understand what the acronym means. Those on the outside may not. If you are on the outside and if you want to get something done, you need to figure out what the acronyms mean. The message is that you need to learn the acronyms used in each bureaucracy. People who would like to join the Peace Corps need to learn that PC is Peace Corps, PCT is Peace Corps Trainee, and PCV is Peace Corps Volunteer.
I do not want to join the Peace Corps, although I have thought about doing so, but I do now understand how organizations generate acronyms.
We started simply. In our business, we translate and edit articles, contracts, scientific reports, and government documents -- you name it and we do it. Our first acronym was file endings distinguishing earlier versions of a file from the most recent version. A filename that began as client _article.doc might have client_article_v1, client_article_v2, client_article_v3, client_article_v4 and client_article_f for the version number and the final job for returning to the client. The first reader finished the job and sent the job to the second reader. The second reader read the job and emailed that the job was good to go, meaning finished and ready to return to the client. Our second acronym was born, good to go, GTG.
Moving from there, we joined the bureaucrats. We had become a small cyberspace organization, and we sent email messages to everyone in the organization. Some of us are in the states and some of us are in Japan, hence, different time zones. Rather than saying my time in San Francisco and your time in Tokyo, we developed within 24 hours, W24. W24 means please respond within 24 hours. The same email message telling you W24 may also include NRN, no response necessary. The sender's intent is to say that you don't have to respond if you are okay with what is happening, but if you do want to respond you need to W24.
Is this totally confusing?
To us, no. This is how we do business and our shortcuts make sense to us. Still if we included these acronyms in our directions so that you had to understand W24 and GTG without an explanation, we would be creating chaos for you.
Today's epiphany had two parts: 1) becoming aware that we had become a small bureaucracy and 2) becoming aware that we used our acronyms in-house. We do not expect you to speak our language. We speak your language, and that is what distinguishes us from a true bureaucracy. We know you don't need to know our acronyms.
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