Chico's Tries Plain Talk, Pfizer Fakes It

But instead of going the Chico's route and acknowledging the obvious, Pfizer hid behind some jargon. The company spoke in a prepared statement about how these drastic cuts were an "initial step" in a "transformation strategy" when, dudes, it looks to me like you were bailing water.

It said the layoffs would "better align our sales organization to our overall customer and business needs." (Read: Who needed them with our business shrinking like we left it in a dryer a cycle too long?) Worst of all, it said the cuts would make Pfizer "a more agile and effective company."

Agile? Well, perhaps, if leaner means agile.

But effective? That is truly a misrepresentation, both to themselves and investors. The remaining salespeople are going to have to increase their workload, and whether this helps or hurts is, at best, an open question. The company might also have to create new ways of reaching doctors. This sounds a bit more like desperation than effectiveness, but true to form, there was the business media in stenographer mode. Look at this piece from Forbes.com.

All that company jargon about initial steps, transformation, agility and effectiveness? Regurgitated back right there in the first few paragraphs, without the requisite nosehold.

It makes a Business Press Maven long for a Chico's style "we stunk up the joint."

When in Doubt, Mouth 'Merger'

Do you want to be a star of stage and screen? It's getting a lot easier, especially the screen part. Just come up with some half-baked guesswork on a potential merger -- of, say Sirius (SIRI Quote) and XM (XMSR Quote) -- and watch the television cameras roll.