Management speak

[Isabo]

These clowns write and speak to be laughrd at. However, there is one that is actually correct and precise English. A special NO-Prize for the first one to spot it!

1. "When I worked for Verizon, I found the phrase going forward to be more sinister than annoying. When used by my boss - sorry, "team leader" - it was understood to mean that the topic of conversation was at an end and not be discussed again."
Nima Nassefat, Vancouver, Canada

2. "My employers (top half of FTSE 100) recently informed staff that we are no longer allowed to use the phrase brain storm because it might have negative connotations associated with fits. We must now take idea showers. I think that says it all really."
Anonymous, England

3. At my old company (a US multinational), anyone involved with a particular product was encouraged to be a product evangelist. And software users these days, so we hear, want to be platform atheists so that their computers will run programs from any manufacturer."
Philip Lattimore, Thailand

4. "Incentivise is the one that does it for me."
Karl Thomas, Perth, Scotland

5. "My favourite which I hear from the managers at the bank I work for is let's touch base about that offline. I think it means have a private chat but I am still not sure."
Gemma, Wolverhampton, England

6. "Have you ever heard the term loop back which means go back to an associate and deal with them?"
Scott Reed, Lakeland, Florida, US


7-8. "We used to collect the jargon used in a list and award the person with the most at the end of the year. The winner was a client manager with the classic you can't turn a tanker around with a speed boat change. What? Second was we need a holistic, cradle-to-grave approach, whatever that is."
Turner, Manchester


9. "Until recently I had to suffer working for a manager who used phrases such as the idiotic I've got you in my radar in her speech, letters and e-mails. Once, when I mentioned problems with the phone system, she screamed 'NO! You don't have problems, you have challenges'. At which point I almost lost the will to live."
Stephen Gradwick, Liverpool

10. "You can add challenge to the list. Problems are no longer considered problems, they have morphed into challenges."
Irene MacIntyre, Courtenay, B

11. "Business speak even supersedes itself and does so with silliness, the shorthand for quick win is now low hanging fruit."
Paul, Formby, UK

12. "And looking under the bonnet."
Eve Russell, Edinburgh

13-14. "The business-speak that I abhor is pre-prepare and forward planning. Is there any other kind of preparedness or planning?"
Edward Creswick, Exeter

15-16. "The one that really gets me is pre-plan - there is no such thing. Either you plan or you don't. The new one which has got my goat is conversate, widely used to describe a conversation. I just wish people could learn to 'think outside the box' although when they put us in cubes what do they expect?"
Malcolm, Houston

17. "I work in one of those humble call centres for a bank. Apparently, what we're doing at the moment is sprinkling our magic along the way. It's a call centre, not Hogwarts."
Caroline Garlick, Ayrshire

18. "A pet hate is the utterly pointless expression in this space. So instead of the perfectly adequate 'how can I help?' it's 'how can I help in this space?' Or the classic I heard on Friday, 'How can we help our customers in this space going forward?' I think I may have caught this expression at source, as I've yet to hear it said outside my own working environment. So I'm on a personal crusade to stamp it out before it starts infecting other City institutions. Wish me luck in this space."
Colin, London

19. "The one phrase that inspires a rage in me is from the get-go."
Andy, Herts

20. "'Going forward' is only half the phrase that gets up my nose - all politicians seem to use the phrase go forward together. 'We must... we shall... let us now... go forward together'. It gives me a terrible mental image of the whole country linking arms and goose-stepping in unison, with the politicians out in front doing a straight-armed salute. Is it just me?"
Frances Smith, Toronto, Canada

21. "I am a financial journalist and am on a mission to remove words and phrases such as 360-degree thinking from existence."
Richard, London

22. "The latest that's stuck in my head is we are still optimistic things will feed through the sales and delivery pipeline (ie: we actually haven't sold anything to anyone yet but maybe we will one day)."
Alexander, Southampton

23. "I worked in PR for many years and often heard the most ludicrous phrases uttered by CEOs and marketing managers. One of the best was, we'd better not let the grass grow too long on this one. To this day it still echoes in my ears and I giggle to myself whenever I think about it. I can't help but think insecure business people use such phrases to cover up their inability for proper articulation."
Leon Reilly, Ealing, London

24. "Need to get all my ducks in a row now - before the five-year-olds wake up."
Mark Dixon, Bridgend

25. "Australians have started to use auspice as a verb. Instead of saying, 'under the auspices of...', some people now say things like, it was auspiced by..."
Martin Pooley, Marrickville, Australia

26. "My favourite: we've got our fingers down the throat of the organisation of that nodule. Translation = Er, no, WE sorted out the problems to cover your backside."
Theo de Bray, Kettering, UK

27. "The health service in Wales is filled with managers who use this type of language as a substitute for original thought. At meetings we play health-speak bingo; counting the key words lightens the tedium of meetings - including, most recently, my door is open on this issue. What does that mean?"
Edwin Pottle, Llandudno

28-29. "The business phrase I find most irritating is close of play, which is only slightly worse than actioning something."
Ellie, London

30. "Here in the US we have the cringe-worthy and also in addition. Then there's the ever-eloquent 'where are we at?' So far, I haven't noticed the UK's at the end of the day prefacing much over here; thank heavens for small mercies."
Eithne B, Chicago, US

[Isabo]

31. "The expression that drives me nuts is 110%, usually said to express passion/commitment/support by people who are not very good at maths. This has created something of a cliche-inflation, where people are now saying 120%, 200%, or if you are really REALLY committed, 500%. I remember once the then-chancellor Gordon Brown saying he was 101% behind Tony Blair, to which people reacted 'What? Only 101?'"
Ricardo Molina, London, UK

32. "My least favourite business-speak term is not enough bandwidth. When an employee used this term to refuse an additional assignment, I realised I was completely 'out of the loop'."
April, Berkeley, US


33. "I once had a boss who said, 'You can't have your cake and eat it, so you have to step up to the plate and face the music.' It was in that moment I knew I had to resign before somebody got badly hurt by a pencil."
Tim, Durban

34. "Capture your colleagues - make sure everyone attends that risk management workshop (compulsory common sense training for idiots)."
Anglowelsh, UK

35-37. "We too used to have daily paradigm shifts, now we have stakeholders who must come to the party or be left out, or whatever."
Barry Hicks, Cape Town, RSA

38. "I have taken to playing buzzword bingo when in meetings. It certainly makes it more entertaining when I am feeding it back (or should that be cascading) at work."
Ian Everett, Bolton

39. "In my work environment it's all cascading at the moment. What they really mean is to communicate or disseminate information, usually downwards. What they don't seem to appreciate is that it sounds like we're being wee'd on. Which we usually are."
LMD, London

40. "At a large media company where I once worked, the head of human resources - itself a weaselly neologism for personnel - told us that she would be cascading down new information to staff. What she meant was she was going to send them a memo. It was one of the reasons I resigned - that, and the fact that the chief exec persisted on referring to the company as a really cool train set."
Andrew, London

41. "Working for an American corporation, this year's favourite word seems to be granularity, meaning detail. As in 'down to that level of granularity'."
Chris Daniel, Anaco, Venezuela


42. "On the wall of our office we have a large signed certificate, signed by all the senior management team, in which they solemnly promise to leverage their talents, display and inspire 'unyielding integrity', and lots of other pretentious buzz-phrases like that. Clueless, the lot of them."
Chris K, Cheltenham UK

43. "After a reduction in workforce, my university department sent this notice out to confused campus customers: 'Thank you for your note. We are assessing and mitigating immediate impacts, and developing a high-level overview to help frame the conversation with our customers and key stakeholders. We intend to start that process within the week. In the meantime, please continue to raise specific concerns or questions about projects with my office via the Transition Support Center..."
Charles R, Seattle, Washington, US

44. "I was told I'd be living the values from now on by my employers at a conference the other week. Here's some modern language for them - meh. A shame as I strongly believe in much of what my employers aim to do. I refuse to adopt the voluntary sectors' client title of 'service user'. How is someone who won't so much as open the door to me using my service? Another case of using four syllables where one would do."
Upscaled Blue-Sky thinker, Cardiff

45. "Business talk 2.0 is maddening, meaningless, patronising and I despise it."
Doug, London

46. "Lately I've come across the strategic staircase. What on earth is this? I'll tell you; it's office speak for a bit of a plan for the future. It's not moving on but moving up. How strategic can a staircase really be? A lot I suppose, if you want to get to the top without climbing over all your colleagues."
Peter Walters, Cheadle Hulme, UK

47. "When a stock market is down why must we be told it is in negative territory?"
Phil Linehan, Mexico City, Mexico

48. "The particular phrase I love to hate is drill down, which handily can be used either as an adverb/verb combo or as a compound noun, ie: 'the next level drill-down', sometimes even in the same sentence - a nice bit of multi-tasking."
B, London

49. "Thanks for the impactful article; I especially appreciated the level of granularity. A high altitude view often misses the siloed thinking typical of most businesses. Absent any scheme for incentivitising clear speech, however, I'm afraid we're stuck with biz-speak."
Timothy Denton, New York

50. "It wouldn't do the pinstripers any harm to crack a smile and say what they really felt once in a while instead of trotting out such clinical platitudes. Of course a group of them may need to workshop it first: Wouldn't want to wrongside the demographic."
Trick Cyclist, Tripoli, Libya

[IROC]

I was in a meeting with the military once and they were talking about phasing out a particular weapons system. They said they were going to "sunset it". It seemed odd to use "sunset" as a verb.

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by IROC

I was in a meeting with the military once and they were talking about phasing out a particular weapons system. They said they were going to "sunset it". It seemed odd to use "sunset" as a verb.

We also call it, "sundowning".

DoD acquisition speak is formitable:

- "Tee it up" is big these days, as in, "let's tee that idea up ..." How about we tee up never saying tee up again.
- "Enterprise resource management/planning" . Sounds dandy, but no one is quite sure WTF it means.

So many more...

[Jim Richards]

Enterprise Architecture Committee. Hmmm, you'd think that committee has something to do with the building, or possibly the overall organization of the business. Noooooo, it has to do with the software tools (purchased & developed in-house) that the business uses. WTF?

[sammyg2]

I worked for an asshat who's only talent was memorizing buzzwords and spewing them back out at every opportunity.
His favorite (and the one I despised the most) was "parking lot".
He used it in reference to a topic that he intended to do nothing about and didn't want to hear about anymore, so he'd say "lets put that one in the parking lot for now".

There was another real winner who had every boss above him buffaloed with his BS. We called him the comic book guy (from the simpsons).
His MO was to pitch a bold new program, get buy-in and a lot of money, then contract it out to a consultant firm. After several months and countless thousands of dollars, he's personally roll out a beta. Nothing substantial, just a hint of where they were going. His song and dance was good enough to convince the bosses that he needed to start working on phase two immediately, in other words he'd distance himself from what he knew was a worthless project just in time and start another one. He never finished anything, and only resulted in a leak in the budget. Not only was he full of crap and worthless, he was incredibly arrogant.
I hated that guy and I told him and everyone else as much in a corporate meeting.
I found out later that after the meeting he went to my boss and demanded I be disciplined. My boss told him to pack sand because if he did that I'd quit in a second and he didn't want to take that risk.

[Rick Lee]

My boss writes or says the word "key" in almost every sentence. I can't stand it. If everything is key, then nothing really is.

How about "solution"? I've heard that enough to last a lifetime. Since I've never ever heard a client ask me for a solution, I wonder why we always say that's what we offer.

[charleskieffner]

we are going to be "PRO-ACTIVE" on this from now on. WTF????

******* jerks that cant tie their shoes let alone do the job they were hired for, come up with this idiotic crap, all the while looking "PRO-ACTIVE".

suffering fools i guess is the cross we have to bear, for some of us.

it actually is scarey how many idiots there are in this world.

[widebody911]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

How about "solution"? I've heard that enough to last a lifetime. Since I've never ever heard a client ask me for a solution, I wonder why we always say that's what we offer.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate...

[Rick Lee]

I was telling a female co-worker, who just yesterday was on the verge tears and quitting, "Hey, this is the price we pay for working for someone else. Start your own business and this stuff goes away along with the steady paycheck."

[widgeon13]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

We also call it, "sundowning".

DoD acquisition speak is formitable:

- "Tee it up" is big these days, as in, "let's tee that idea up ..." How about we tee up never saying tee up again.
- "Enterprise resource management/planning" . Sounds dandy, but no one is quite sure WTF it means.

So many more...

Sundowning is an interesting term because it is (in it's original form) a nursing home term used for the behavior of those suffering dementia and how they react to the late afternoon sunset, get crazy, depressed, rebellious and other unpreditable behavior.

I find it intriguing that the military has adopted the term, maybe the nursing home got it from the military. WTF knows!

The biz talk word that I hate is the term "strawman" WTF is that? I had a boss that used the term all the time, I hated him as much as I hated the term. I fired him. Yes, you read that right, I fired him! Not too hard to figure out what hapopened.

[bivenator]

I hate "taking it to another level" Why not just start at that level.

[oldE]

Two of my least favorites:

Outplaced: A 'Human Resources' manager once told me we had to take a certain series of actions before an employee could be "outplaced". I asked her if that meant what I thought it meant. She responded, "what do you think it means?" I replies with a group of phrases which included, "fixed, axed, ****canned, terminated..."

Getting on the bus: There was a major push from the company's system's manager to replace the three computer systems in production, sales and personnel with one integrated system. There were a number of us who could see the shortcuts, limitations and the gaps in the system which had been tested and was going live in a week or two. We were dragged into a meeting and told we 'had to get on the bus' because that is where the company was going. Our response was we didn't mind going anywhere, but the system as it stood was going to crash and should be held up until it would operate at least as well as what we had.

The 'Go Live' date hit and the 'bus' hit a wall. It was everything the hype of Y2K failed to produce, an expensive, time wasting disaster.

A few weeks later, when the software had been de-bugged, we were gathered for another pep-talk. When the 'get on the bus' line was trotted out again, I responded that we had all been on the bus the last time, it had crashed and, frankly, we were a bit leary of getting back on.

I think I was viewed as being a negative influence after that.

Les

[Jim Richards]

You should have asked for seat belts.

[Hawktel]

When I worked for Logitech a sale manager couldn't call a bonus a bonus.

He has to call it, "Skin in the game" as in:

"You guys are all working harder now you have skin in the game"

[Hawktel]

. got the double post!

[JV911SYDNEY]

"solution", "pro-active", "holistic", "think out side the square", "key learnings", "space", "stakeholders", "look and feel"...for the love of god, make it stop...make it stoooooooop!!!

[Dan in Pasadena]

"Think outside the box"

"Let's have a 'sidebar' after the meeting" - WTF? If its worth bring up in the meeting, its worth discussing. NOT discussing it means there is someone in the meeting you don't want to know about the subject to be discused. Asshats.

[Rick Lee]

A few more I hear regularly are: full suite, mission critical, segway, best practices, position ourselves, reaching out. Gawd, I hate it when people call things "reaching out". No, I called or emailed. I didn't reach out.

[Dan in Pasadena]

Rick,
Don't forget "networking" (getting to know people in regular-ass speak) and "symbiotic relationship". "Skill set" and organic" also rise to near the top of my list.

In my business (construction in the public sector) we have to deal with managers in the art and public affairs fields. They use what I call "artspeak" and love to talk about concepts being "organic" or being a "fusion" of ideas. Colors must "pop". It is all I can do not to laugh out loud while rolling my eyes.