Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say

February 18, 2010 on 11:02 am | In buzzword, communication, Writing | 6 Comments

Office worker 1: I just don’t have the bandwidth to get this done. I feel like I’m drinking from a firehose, and besides so many of these assignments are not in my wheelhouse, and they are neither game changers nor paradigm shifters. And we really haven’t baked in all the data yet.

Office worker 2: At the end of the day none of these deliverables is really actionable anyway. I want to bring to the table best of breed strategies to our centers of excellence and get buy-in from c-level, but I don’t think we’ll ever close the loop.

Office worker 1: Perhaps we could circle back next week, drill down on these items and disambiguate them.

Office worker 2: I think if we could set up some facetime to review the data at a granular level we could leverage our learnings to come up with an end-to-end solution that could gain traction in the market and help us leapfrog our competition. If we could monetize this mission-critical solution we would be heavily incentivized and perhaps kicked upstairs into a corner office.

Intern: Damn, I didn’t know I’d need a foreign language in this job.

What buzzwords do you hate? Let’s start the list…

Other Posts You Might Like

  • http://www.e11studios.com Beth Sowell

    When I was working in Corporate America in a previous life, I really hated to hear “think outside the box” and “synergy”.

  • http://www.my-creativeteam.com Harry Hoover

    Those are two of my least favorites, too, Beth. I don’t know when corporate people will get over this obsession with talking like robots instead of humans.

  • http://www.sarahrolph.com Sarah Rolph

    Your dialog is hilarious! I think you included the ones I hate most. Actionable in this usage really bugs me; didn’t it used to mean lawsuit-worthy? Baked-in sets me on edge. C-level annoys me–so pretentious. Monetize bothers me–does it even have a meaning? Learnings makes me ill.

    What’s painful is that I know I use some of these words. Bandwidth; I try not to but I do. Drill down; it happens. Circle back; okay I’ll admit it: I like this one!

  • http://www.my-creativeteam.com Harry Hoover

    Thanks, Sarah. The funny thing is I heard almost everyone of those in a recent conversation. Truth is funnier than fiction.

  • Michael

    “As we transition…”
    It’s so annoying too me when a corporate leader, someone who has a degree, probably an MBA, can’t spell or use proper grammar. TRANSITION IS NOT A VERB!

  • http://www.my-creativeteam.com Harry Hoover

    Amen, Michael. Seems like today anything can be turned into a verb.

Powered by WordPress with Pool theme design by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^