50 office-speak phrases you love to hate

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

People submit their worst to the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7457287.stm

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

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

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

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

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

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

[no name 1]

You don't want to know how many I hear daily......

Idea showers is my fave. Brilliant!!!

[Krikit 1,164]

Idea showers. That reminded me of Bullsh!t Bingo

[mawilson 2,133]

Personally, I hate the (mostly American) practice of taking a perfectly good verb,

using it to form a noun, then using the noun as a verb again.

Examples:

lever(v) -> leverage(n) -> leverage(v) (i.e. "leveraging performance")

burgle(v) -> burglar(n) -> burglarize(v)

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

I hate the way nouns and adjectives get turned into verbs, like "incentivize"

the one that drives me the most nuts is granular - I wasn't entirely sure what people meant when they started using that one. did they mean some kind of breakfast cereal?

also, you can't hear the results of a market research study these days without "taking a deep dive into the data"

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

"Robust"

"It is what it is"

"At the end of the day..."

"Going Forward..." - Whenever someone says this I'm half tempted to say "Going Backward..."

[jundp 191]

A bit different because I'm in education, but our principle calls the school our "brand" and that we our selling our "product" (education?) to our "clients" (students?). It's so annoying because most of us refuse to see students as clients and rather as learners....

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

A bit different because I'm in education, but our principle calls the school our "brand" and that we our selling our "product" (education?) to our "clients" (students?). It's so annoying because most of us refuse to see students as clients and rather as learners....

A friend of mine used to work as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. They called the patients there "clients".

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

A bit different because I'm in education, but our principle calls the school our "brand" and that we our selling our "product" (education?) to our "clients" (students?). It's so annoying because most of us refuse to see students as clients and rather as learners....

how do you leverage that brand?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

balls to the wall - that one makes me feel queasy.

[~krakatoa~ 27]

I hate:

incentivise

conversate

360-degree thinking

I hear a lot of "going forward"

"I action that."

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I'll tell you what I really hate...

"A business is..." metaphors.

[jundp 191]

A bit different because I'm in education, but our principle calls the school our "brand" and that we our selling our "product" (education?) to our "clients" (students?). It's so annoying because most of us refuse to see students as clients and rather as learners....

how do you leverage that brand?

We use a lot of "Catholicity" obviously.

[no name 1]

the one that drives me the most nuts is granular - I wasn't entirely sure what people meant when they started using that one. did they mean some kind of breakfast cereal?

My boss totally says that!!!! And low hanging fruit. And let's take it offline.

I think they teach it in the MBA program....

[~krakatoa~ 27]

Oh, another one.

"110%."