So, for everyone’s sake, let’s not turn the meeting into a horror movie. Kind of inappropriate speak that might make people feel uncomfortable when they’re not aware of its meaning. ‘Bleeding edge’, ‘moving the needle’ and ‘skin the game’ could be used in the same sentence with Hannibal Lecter. ![]() Let’s save it for your after-office hours. Same goes for ‘peeling of the union.’ Or trying to find out someone’s ‘secret sauce. ‘Pick the low hanging fruit,’ is one we can still hear echoing in our dreams. But what does that actually mean? Like, literally? And why do we have to give a 110 percent? Things tend to get blown up, so what do you say – next year we’ll give a 150 percent? Since when is a hundred percent not the maximum anymore? I know we all like to ‘aim for the moon’, but let’s be realistic. We all want to make an impact, be a game changer and truly disrupt. Let’s stop being silly and just say what we actually mean, shall we? 110% = just bad math Sometimes we tend to forget we’re talking about people here. Tiger teams, jumping the shark, ducks in a… well, you know what we’re getting at. We all know what that means – pinky promise. So, let’s get back to ‘just’ being creative. Kudos for the ones who make it through the next brainstorm session without throwing in a little ‘out-of-the-box’, a pinch of ‘idea showering’ or a touch of ‘blue-sky thinking.’ We’re so used to throwing it around like brainstorm-confetti, that it has completely lost its value. Here’s a cheat sheet on how to Marie Kondo your corporate jargon madness. ![]() Tip: stay authentic and bring back the actual meaning of expressions. Of course, you can still use idioms in the workplace, but due to its overuse, some business-related sayings completely lost their initial meaning. So, hereby a little knick-knack to dial down on the corporate language. But in the meantime, these buzzwords are used as substitute for actually discussing and tackling real issues. ![]() Over the years, meetings grew into a manager’s moment to kick off a round of corporate slang bingo, where you – for an hour or so – can cross off buzzword after buzzword. These are the corporate buzzwords that no boardroom can seem to shake these days. If you’re wondering: no, we’re not running a zoo. High time to set the bar at 800-pound gorilla, to get your ducks in a row and to discuss the elephant in the room. Which roughly translates as "I wish to moot the proposal that we downsize our prolix parlance and get back to boardroom basics".On Monday morning, a notification of your Google calendar pops up on your phone: ‘9AM stand-up meeting.’ You’ll get ready to dodge the KPI’s, USP’s and win-wins splashing around. "Then someone will have to stand up and say this is ridiculous, let's get back to basics". "But at some point it will become so ludicrous that it will actually interfere with business. ![]() However ugly and irritating such management speak may be, its use is set to continue, Ms Brocks says. "The speaker may choose these words because they give the impression of being cutting-edge, knowing more than other people and being attuned to North American styles of management," he said. "Or it can be used to exclude and confuse others, as well as maskĬommunications consultant Dr Guy Fielding, a former social psychologist at Oxford University, says it is not the words which are important, but their connotations. "It can help bring people and teams together in an almost tribal way as companies develop their own specific jargon," he said. New Big Thing (NBT): more jargon on the way Ms Brocks says the boom in management studies, and the habit of sending bosses onto courses where management is treated as a science, has accelerated the coining of new terms. It then spreads to the UK via internal communications in transatlantic companies, management books, and training courses. It comes from two broad strands - the computer jargon or "geekspeak" of Silicon Valley, and the pseudo-science of business theory. It has even spurned a new boardroom pastime - buzzword bingo, in which employees gleefully tick off corporate-speak used by their bosses.īut where do such unwieldy and often baffling phrases come from, and why are they bandied so enthusiastically by middle-managers up and down the country?Įmma Brocks, who compiles a column on office life for the Guardian, says most modern meeting speak is, perhaps unsurprisingly, coined in America. A new survey by Office Angles found 65% of those who attend daily meetings frequently encountered business jargon. Office jargon has become so prevalent in the UK, people are using phrases and happily admitting they have no idea what they are talking about.
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