“Off-line”. As in, we can talk about this off-line. “At the end of the day…”
Well today we are going to meet with Mr. X. Now we need to give Mr. X the warm and fuzzies because we all know he is the go-to man for Mr. Big. I’m assuming we will use the normal three-prong approach and drill down into the details as they arise. Now Jimmy, we are assuming you will be delivering your technical savvy to the table, we all know what a braniac you are. So let go team, this is literally our last chance to capture this account.
… ummm … pardon me while I barf …
Yes. We are* empowered * to make that decision.
Well I hope you have the bandwidth to implement all of the actionable items in your workstream. Lets capture this as a “next step” for our next checkpoint so we can baseline our progress against plan.
(I am a professional consultant by the way. We don’t have any other way of speaking).
Actual email. Bolded are the things I hate to see, and I see it all the time.
In order to promote our core competencies…[ insert random management decision here — usually just mucking around with the org chart ]
Due to unexpected business activity… [ we’re about to layoff some of the peasants to preserve our bonuses ]
Recognizing an increased need for security… [ too many of the unwashed have been parking in the Potentates’ parking lot ]
In order to promote diversity… [ we’re letting go some of the old, white guys in the factory; 'cause we sure as hell ain’t gonna have any of “them” in management ]
(Note: We’ve been subjected to annual “diversity” training for several years now. Our org chart carries pics of our exalted overlords. It’s an unbroken sea of lily-white males with good hair)
“Manage the client’s expectations.”
Usually, this comes up when some salesperson has made pie-in-the-sky promises to a client. These promises have been made with absolutely no idea how they will be implemented, but since it’s the salesperson’s job to close the deal, those pesky details can be handled by the rest of us peons.
Thank Og, we have a director of inventory management who is VERY sympathetic to our “issues,” (there are no problems, only “issues”), and has told sales people, basically, “Manage the client’s expections,” which means, “Bring it down to earth, son. You promised the sun and we can only deliver the moon. Deal with it.”
Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.
I don’t know if this qualifies as corporate speek but “think outside of the box” drives me mad.
I can’t quite think how to explain this, but if you’re using this stupid phrase that I think means “have an original idea” aren’t you putting yourself smack-dab inside the box?
I you get this on film I will pay you 5 dollars. Cash.
We have a problem with jargon. Language used to inflate importance or disguise meaning defeats the purpose of communication. For specialists and workers, mutually understood slang and abbreviations help them communicate clearly. In managerial offices however, Corporate Quality Strategy Performance Administrators have to make it seem to the casual observer,and more importantly their supervisors, that whatever busywork they do is really very very important, the raison d’etre for the organization, in fact. They do this by disguising their paperpushing and dog fuckery in the language of physical labor.
Shop: A grouping of staff, reporting (out) to the same manager(s): i.e.: “Mary’s shop is tasked with that piece.” Unless your worksite features tools, pneumatic equipment and calendars with naked ladies on it, you should not call your workplace a ‘shop’. Term favored by managers whose duties in no way could be mistaken for useful or manual labor.
Piece: something violently mundane that needs to be done: “Mary, can your shop be tasked with the ‘calling the copier guys for more toner’ piece?” Aka: job, duty, chore.
Deliverables: Products or services not delivered by a man in a truck, ie: reports, software, charts. As with ‘shop’, disguising bureaucracy and busywork with the language of manual labor to make it seem useful or necessary.
Report Out: Synonym of ‘report on’, or give an update about a subject: i.e.: “report out to Regional Mgt. group.” There is no such thing as ‘reporting in’, of course.
Team: A grouping of staff with putative similar goals. Often fight like cats over a dead fish.
Work Unit: Surprisingly Marxist term used by pseudo-capitalists to describe a group of workers. See ‘shop’.
Challenges: Problems.
Tasked: Given a task/job/chore to do. Unfortunately, makes me think of nursery rhymes: “A tisket, a tasket, I’m tasked with lugging this basket!”
Usage of: using
Utilizing: using.
Implement: start, commence
Action items: Stuff to do.
Transitioning: Changing
Change management: Getting people to put up with being treated like a Fujian factory slave, or how to keep laid off staff from shooting up the executive director’s office or sneaking in and putting liquid Ex-Lax into the ED’s coffee pot. Often involves forced consumption of moveable cheese products
Metrics: how to count stuff. (What happened to ‘Measures’? Wasn’t that pretentious enough?)
Brown Tongue Brigade: self explanatory.
Articulate: Speak,say. " “I wanted to articulate to her about the cleaners leaving more TP in the washrooms”
Our overlords change title every six months or so, to some tag with a semi-catchy acronym. Moons ago, they were Regional Directors, but that was too short, so they became Regional Executive Officers(REO’s). Then, to allow them to direct rather than officiate, they became Regional Executive Directors (RED’s). A couple of months ago, someone who appreciated brevity decided they should be called Exeutive Directors.
No one could figure out why I’d giggle whenever someone mentioned the “E-D’s”. Even after I said " Hmmm, the E-D’s; aren’t there pills a man can take for that? I remeber a lot of ads during the Super Bowl for them…"
“Parking Lot Issues”= the leftover issues at the end of the meeting that the attendees discuss as they metaphorically walk out to the metaphorical parking lot from which they will metaphorically drive off in their metaphorical cars.
Gahhh!
Most of my personal favorites are already taken, but here are a couple more.
Repurpose
When wet stuff falls from the sky, you have experienced a rain event.
A couple that I just don’t understand:
Programatically seems to mean either “by following the rules/customs/practices of our program” or “by means of [software] programming.” Is that right?
Leverage [v.t.] seems to mean…well, damned if I know. When you leverage something, what are you doing?
Solution.
It means EVERYTHING now: hardware, software, food, entertainment, transportaton, you name it.
It’s not a computer. It’s just a “solution” now.
It’s not a prepackaged meal or TV dinner. It’s a “meal solution.”
It’s not a car. It’s a “mobility solution.”
People seem to universally DESPISE jargon, yet it continues to be used. Is there anyone here who can defend marketing jargon; who actually uses it and likes it?
There’s something very human about it, isn’t there, for certain groups to enforce, consciously or not, their isolation through obscure language? Most specialized disciplines do this: lawyers, scientists, artists… If you don’t speak the latest “lingo,” you aren’t part of the “crowd.”
So, in a certain way, isn’t this a constantly-evolving thing? Just like the old merchant guilds of Europe, the current merchant class has to keep updating its slang in order to identify “insiders”? Which explains why slang goes “out of date,” so to speak. And it’s why the business world keeps coming up with goofier and goofier ways to say things: the old slang got out.
And like I said, it’s possible we’re not even really aware that we’re doing it.
Hmmm…
I’ve always seen it used with the latter meaning, but I work in IT so it might just be sample bias.
:smack: Can’t believe I forgot to mention that particular abomination, which often means anything the speaker wants it to mean. Often, it means to steal or borrow without asking: In the words of a very highly paid consultant who, at the time, worked for an accounting firm that has subsequently collapsed in the wake of Enron: “We don’t steal good code we find at client’s sites, we leverage it.”
Branding
Paradigm shift
Team building
Part of it is an attempt to sound more original, important or smarter than you actually are. You wouldn’t pay someone thousands of dollars to organize a meeting and write notes on a white board because you wouldn’t think it “added value”. You WOULD pay someone thousands of dollars to “facilitate” a “brainstorming session” and “capture” “intellectual capital” on the white board.
OK. So, submittal having been used over the past 100+ years by the American Institute of Architects is a made up word?