I didn't say reaching for authenticity is inauthentic.
In fact, I explicitly said these ideas are worthy and should be pursued.
Rather, you can't just invoke well-worn phrases because they've been misused so much that people don't know what they mean anymore. You have to do the thing, just say it in a new way.
It's a shame, just like it's a shame that the word "gay" can no longer just mean "happy," but it's a fact that you have to deal with.
Some goals recede further into the distance the harder you try to reach them. You can't work at having an authentic relationship with your customers, you have to talk to them like a real person.
In it's practical application it's a bit of a jedi mind trick; you can't force yourself to be more authentic than you are at any given point in time; you just have to relax and be, authentically.
I'd agree with you on the overuse of certain tropes, pretty much any community has a few terms that are never precisely defined that are used as shorthand to frame a loose group of ideas "lean startups", "social media", "agile"; they'll be used and abused and everyone involved will have a slightly different piece of the elephant in mind when they use the term. But within the community they aren't used as precise technical terms, but rather as signals of allegiance to one sub-group or ideology.
In fact, I explicitly said these ideas are worthy and should be pursued.
Rather, you can't just invoke well-worn phrases because they've been misused so much that people don't know what they mean anymore. You have to do the thing, just say it in a new way.
It's a shame, just like it's a shame that the word "gay" can no longer just mean "happy," but it's a fact that you have to deal with.