The IT team at work got an email today telling us to follow up on an issue we were having. It said, in part:
.
Please action this item??? C’mon, do people actually write like this? I always sort of hoped it was just a big joke that Scott Adams made up…
I’d like to reply in the most corporate-speak way possible. Anyone want to help me let the Boss know that my Items have been Actioned?
As a lawyer*, I advise you to avoid doing anything actionable.
Excuse me, I speak “Corporate”!
Ahem.
“Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I volunteer to drive this to resolution, and will touch bases with you upon completion.”
“Our team will own this issue and leverage our skills to bring about a win-win for us and our users. It will require us to think outside the box, but we will action this item until we develop a value proposition on the deliverables.”
No offence intended, unless you deserve it of course. 
freckafree, that’s damn good! And a little scary.
Hey, I’ll play. Dunno if it’s any good, but here goes…
“FYI, we have accepted ownership of this concern. In actioning this item, please be advised that we have tasked Bob and Sue with confirmation and follow-up, thus maximizing our support capabilities from both a proactive and a reactive standpoint, and in doing so, providing the company with timely and accurate responses from the user base in the event of further concerns.”
Whatever else you do, don’t forget to “close the loop”.
Managers get all pissy if you don’t “close the loop”.
Feedback from the end users indicates that the workflow has been restored to peak efficiency.
And that fills up my Buzzword Bingo card. BINGO!
IGJoe, please send the original in to Scott Adams!
Why stop at misusing one word? Transform the entire message.
One must know one’s enemy in order to defeat him/her. When I hear someone use the incredibly hackneyed “think outside the box” as a metaphor for fresh, creative thinking, it makes me want to slap the shit out of them. Oh, wait, that was a different thread…
Reply as follows:
“After 12 hours on eBay, item successfully auctioned. Winning bid of $3.43 submitted by 12-year old Melissa Hawkins of Ponca City, OK. Most departmental furniture and equipment thrown in to sweeten deal.”
Or, more enigmatically:
“Noun successfully verbed. Lexical inventory depleted.”
I was told I was great at thinking outside the box. My reply was always, " You didn’t budget me a box so I had to improvise."
Any good reply should also make some mention of improvements to ROI, increased turns, or expense reduction.
I gotta remember that one!
Obviously, everyone in this thread is leveraging their synergies and taking full ownership of the task at hand.
Great response! But as someone who works as a government contractor, I worry that you’ve overdone it by using the active voice, an action verb, and worst of all, to have clearly identified responsibility: “we have tasked Bob and Sue with…”. Truly great corpspeak seeks the comfortable murkiness of plausible deniability. One doesn’t want to accidentally accept a new duty, especially one that might be permanent.
My recommendation would be to slightly amend as follows:
“…please be advised that conditional implementation of actioning will go forward on an ad-hoc basis, to maximize suport capabilities…” and insert “Please direct inquiries to Bob and Sue” at the end. Note that you’re not explicitly assigning to Bob and Sue, you’re just implying that you might have. Further note that using the lovely “go forward” buzzphrase has obscured whether you mean “this one will proceed thusly” or “future ones will be handled this way”. “Ad-hoc” protects you from claims that this is now a permanent arrangement, while implying that you had to scramble (Proactively, no less) as a manager to make it happen. In all the confusion, you get away with not having to spell out the condtions that might define “conditional implementation”.
Sailboat
snort
This is so damn good…
For god’s sake, what about 6 sigma?
Perhaps you could substitue “Bob and Sue” with an acronym. “We have tasked the SRT with…” No need to explain what it means. If they don’t know, they won’t understand.
However you end up replying to this, make sure you do the needful.