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Getting Down to Business

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Got a promotion the other day. Saw it in black and white, in an ad in a magazine. “You Are The CEO Of Your Life,” it said in big, whopping letters. Some other woman was pictured, but I could tell by the way it read that they meant me.

So now I’m the CEO. And things are going to be verrrrry different around here. For one thing, we’re gonna sling some lingo. Hey, that’s half the fun of being the CEO--getting to bark orders in business-ese.

For instance, we’re going to have “goals.” And one definite goal is going to be the “enhancement” of a certain teenager’s “performance” in “re-engineering” that mess she has shoved under her bed. Ooh, that sounds--how do the CEOs say it? Oh, yes--”empowering!” Also, “exciting!” We’re very excited to announce certain parties are going to be keeping their rooms clean.

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Also, we’ll be looking for new ways to “leverage” the toddler--reconfigure her “skill set” so that she can maybe make herself useful between now and the millennium. Cute alone won’t cut it anymore in this operation. (Though she’s probably too short to downsize.)

Additionally, as CEO, I’m wondering if we could perhaps “outsource” the function of some of these cats? And is the dog really doing all she can to be part of the “team”? And as for this job, memo to self: Tell editor that the shareholders are clamoring for us to “grow” this column. Yeah. That’s the ticket. Goal is to “double its market share” of column inches, on the way to (heh, heh) a “takeover” of this page. . .

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OK. So it was only a glorious dream. One glimpse at the get-up your correspondent wore to drop her kids off at school this morning, and it’s frighteningly obvious that she isn’t the CEO of anything. But that ad really did run in a magazine. And it wasn’t the only way in which the mind-set of business has started to seep out of the boardroom.

A recent visit to a house in West L.A., for instance, revealed family mission statements posted in all the upstairs bedrooms. (“We treat all our family members with dignity and encourage all to realize their potential. . . .” Or some such.) Not long ago, a proponent of Prop. 10, the cigarette-tax initiative, made a reference to “best practices,” a phrase beloved by corporate consultants. He was talking about playtime at a certain preschool.

In this newspaper a few months back, the father of a pair of tennis whizzes complained that they always win, and “that’s not a good way to grow your game.” Meanwhile, a new fire chief in Orange County said his appointment offered, among other things, the “opportunity to re-engineer.”

Somehow, it seems, we’ve all gone corporate. Even in our off-hours. Even on firetrucks and tennis courts. Even in places that heretofore were off-limits to the culture of work.

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A friend of a friend who has made his career in corporate communications had some interesting thoughts on this front. Since he has spent years fighting a personal (and losing) battle to persuade his bosses to drop the jargon, he asked to remain unnamed, but his insights were worth passing on.

“It’s a curse,” he laughed, ticking off his favorite bits of creeping corporate-ese--throwaway words like “strategic” and “hands-on.” Also the phrase “buy-in” as a synonym for agreement, and “takeaway” for understanding. And (a personal favorite) the use of “next steps” instead of just saying that you have a plan.

But, he added, workplace culture has made some real contributions: “It’s a little Orwellian, but there are certain rules for how people can relate. If we hear fewer racial epithets now in everyday life, if women are spoken to more as equals, it’s partly because those rules are enforced on the job.”

Work seeps into life as life seeps into work. Our offices, increasingly, have become our communities--the places where we eat, mingle, compare wardrobes and cars, look out for each other, snipe, fall in love. We bring parts of ourselves to the workplace, and bring parts of the workplace home. Once you could look in the bathroom mirror and see, say, a half-crazed woman hip-deep in unkempt kids and unmet deadlines. Now when you brush your teeth you’re standing face-to-face with a “CEO.”

Still, it sounds like a lot of work, this being the CEO of your life. Unless, of course, you delegate. Yeah! That’s the ticket! Memo to self: Build on delegation strategy. Tap knowledge communities within family. Get buy-in on exciting next steps.

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com

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