Innovative Acronyms: From BYOD to SYOG, DYOJ and AYOE

Acronyms drive me nuts.

But I couldn’t resist putting together this post’s headline after reading this article, courtesy of eWeek. 

It shares some insights gleaned from this week’s CITE (Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise) Conference and Expo in San
Francisco.

Of particular interest to me, and the text from which I plucked the above acronyms, is this quote from the conference’s keynote speaker, Gary Hamel of the London Business School:

“Employees want the power to make their own decisions, set their own schedules, work from wherever they can be comfortable, and BYOD [bring-your-own-device] helps free them to do that.

“As amazing as it sounds, companies can get along without a hierarchical group of managers if the employees are self-motivated enough to do their work on their own volition. What we’ll be seeing next are concepts such as SYOG (set-your-own-goals), DYOJ (design-your-own-job) and AYOE (approve-your-own-expenses). It’s not that far-fetched.”

And then this, which relates directly to an Office Solutions blog article I posted recently:

“Remember when Tom Peters wrote the mega-bestseller In Search of Excellence in the mid-1980s?” Hamel said. “He focused much of the book on a great, creative company called HP. You know, ‘The HP Way,’ creating new $50 million businesses, the story of the garage, classic Silicon Valley. And HP was an innovator in those days. But then [CEO from 2005 to 2010] Mike Hurd, Mark Hurd—what’s his name?—basically drove all the innovation mojo out of them.”

Also, according to the article, Hamel reflected on the day Steve Jobs introduced the iPad.

“About three or four times during his presentation, he stopped and said: ‘It’s just so beautiful to hold!’ Can you imagine Mark Hurd standing up on stage with an HP product and saying: ‘It’s just so beautiful to hold!’  Not a chance. Companies have to keep reinventing themselves and their products.”

Based on those two key themes—workplace evolution and innovation—it will be interesting to see what other takeaways emerge from the CITE conference.