Management speak - don't you just hate it?
Here, we list 50 of the best worst examples.
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
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
