Repeat after me

Just came back from another one of those endless meetings... you know the kind... unwilling co- conspirators. Furtive blackberry checking under the table. Little or nothing of consequence to be discussed but two hours blocked off.  Glazed expressions, too much coffee... and the dreaded  corpo-speak.  I now, for your reading pleasure, present my top ten list of current business jargon that should be banned from the planet.

1. Dashboard
 noun: shorthand for describing a one page summary with charts and graphs.
2. "Reach out to"
verb: call subject to coerce him/her into doing something.
3. "On boarding"
noun: bring up to speed...oops..educate a new team member. (oh dear)
4. Wrap my head around
verb: Understand
5. Drill Down
verb: review detail
6. Granular
noun: see drill down above.  What one drills down to.
7. Touch Base
verb: talk to. check in. follow up.
8. Band width
noun: smarts, capacity.
9. Touch points
noun: I don't friggin' know.
10. Going forward.
Preposition: From now on.

It's curious to me how often we all fall victim to this sort of code language use.  Somehow, I guess, it makes us feel like we're part of the group,  salient, clued-in.  What ever.  What's funny, or maybe sad is how often we turn off our thinker and make like parrots.

Comments

[Hawk]

I love this. I would have to add my very least favorite: "let's talk to..." instead of "let's talk about...". That one drives me mad. How on earth do these phrases get their steam?? I have a plan: invent a new certain to be eventually mind and stomach churning but plausible catch-phrase and have an entire staff bandy it around in a meeting with some out-of-the-loop head honchos, who will then feel compelled to speak in the language of their peeps and will thus carry the phrase out of the meeting like a virus and start throwing it about as if they of course had always used it cuz they're clued-in - then see what happens with it!!