Nokia Acronyms: The Sequel By Aron Heller | Nokia, Monday, 11 Jan 2021

I thought it would be a one-off, but even after a dozen stories in various platforms over these past three months all anyone at Nokia still wants to ask me about is acronyms.

Despite delving into serious topics such as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Artificial Intelligence, office diversity and personal journeys, colleagues I encounter mostly appear to recall my goofy take on all the wacky acronyms I’ve encountered.

Indeed, my 400-word post on Nov. 12 seems to be my most popular internal entry to date with thousands of views, dozens of likes and even more entertaining comments.

It spawned a lively conversation, online and in the local cafeteria, with several fellow Nokians offering a variety of resources to navigate through the wonderful world of abbreviations. I thank you all and have since made some more startling discoveries.

Turns out SLA stands for Service Level Agreement and not South Lebanon Army, while SAM is a Service Aware Manager and not a Surface-to-Air Missile. A&E is Acquisition and Engineering, not Arts and Entertainment. CBT is Customer Business Team rather than Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Most informatively, I learned that AP could be Annual Planning and not just my previous place of employment – the Associated Press.

(A note to all the fellow rock fans out there, though, I just can’t accept CCR to be Change, Claim and Risk Management. It’s always going to stay Creedence Clearwater Revival to me).

All this silliness took on a more personal angle when I discovered the name of my new post-reorg working group. Get ready for this: CNS CSP GBC MCA. I’m not kidding. (Though I have taken comfort that the CNS of Cloud and Network Services offers a nostalgic reminder of one of my first publishing outlets, Columbia News Service.)

Seriously, the acronyms are just part of an insider jargon I’m still figuring out. It even boils down to our job titles, making it hard to tell what people do.

Officially, my internal Nokia profile lists me as Digital Business Portfolio Market Director. But I’m not sure what that means. I hardly consider myself an expert about anything digital, business, portfolio, market or even director related.

What I really do is write and I’m grateful for all the platforms and opportunities to do so at Nokia. So, as I keep steering through this new world I thank all my colleagues for not keeping things on the DL and dropping me the occasional FYI so I don’t go MIA (shout out to the late, great Robin Williams).