SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CAREERS : MAKING IT WORK : A New Age Dawns at the Office : A Survivor’s Guide to Feel-Good Jobspeak

These days, you no longer get more authority at work. Someone empowers you. Or maybe you empower yourself.

Unless, of course, there is an empower outage at your company.

Then you run the risk of getting downsized out of a company, probably the result of some kind of re-engineering project some hotshot MBA dreamed up.

While you are trying to figure out if you even have a parachute, let alone what color it is, you no doubt should consider trying to re-career.

By this time, you may well be suffering from sanity deficit disorder. Time to re-happy yourself.

Forget about the aging of the American work force as a problem. A bigger worry is New Age-ing, especially the proliferation of the goofy, feel-good euphemisms that clutter up the workplace.

There was a time when people talked about jobs, careers, promotions and getting ahead in terms of paychecks and insurance coverage for root canals.

Now what people really want is fulfillment and having meaning, or so the book-writing consultant and the $1,000-a-day seminar leader would have us believe. Who wants another week of vacation when spirituality on the job beckons?

Here’s one suggestion: Let’s re-euphemize the workplace. Throw out all the warm, fuzzy language and theories and get back to basics (yet another modern management cliche). Let’s make it a level playing field again for the person who looks at work as, well, a job.

Granted, catchy phrases and euphemisms have been dreamed up for years by the consultant, itself a frequent euphemism for “unemployed.” Anyone still remember what a quality circle is, let alone how it works? Or the ABCs of Theory Z?

In the ‘60s, there was the Organization Man running headlong into the Peter Principle. In the ‘70s, there was the gamesman. In the ‘80s, we looked high and low for synergies while searching for excellence by trying to get close to those customers.

Granted, the New Age-ing isn’t likely to end anytime soon. The billion-dollar-plus management consultant profession that churns out book after book won’t let it.

So while we are waiting for some re-sanity on the job, here is a brief survival guide if you want to make that job work. What you really need to know to survive in today’s New Age job--make that workplace--market is the new jobspeak.

* Don’t worry about getting fired anymore.

No one will ever use the word. The personnel--make that human resources--profession gave up on the word long ago, probably at the prodding of lawyers who think such an impersonal term isn’t the kind of thing a jury wants to hear when someone sues later.

Layoff was once the euphemism of choice, but no longer. Arnold Schwarzenegger aside, even termination--wrongful or otherwise--is out of vogue.

In today’s company, you are more likely to be downsized out of your job.

Better yet, the company may rightsize you. These are particularly popular terms in the defense industry, where downsizing and rightsizing have increased in inverse proportion to the amount of subsidizing by Uncle Sam.

* If you want to impress your boss, re-term the vocabulary.

You especially need to come up with a lot of “re” phrases.

Tell the boss you want to help re-engineer, restructure and revamp your job. All it means is that you want to tear up the mess you made in the first place and try to put it back together again.

Too big a mess and your boss will want to re-career you by shipping you off to your company’s equivalent of Siberia.

* Don’t make it sound as if you want the boss’s job. Make it clear your goal is more empowerment on the job.

* Most important, find a way to use trendy techno-phrases.

Let everyone know you’re heading onto the information superhighway. Let the boss know you are in the fast lane--not stuck at a call box--and that you are willing to info-car-pool with your fellow workers.

* Draft yourself a mission statement.

Avoid such basic missions as “I want to earn $250,000 a year by age 30 and have a lodge in Aspen.”

You want to explore the politics of meaning as it relates to your career. You want to make a commitment to excellence. You want fulfillment that comes from your high ethical standards because you know that in the long run it’s good for business.

Avoid deal breakers. Look for niches. Seek out strategic partners and strategic alliances. Try to be lean, but not too mean. Position yourself and your company. Be a people person. And always look for win-win situations.