Business Buzzword Bingo

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Following on from laup's earlier post - where the buzzword 'synergy' was used by a prospective employer, I thought I'd start a thread where people give their own pet hates for buzzwords/phrases that they've encountered.

I'll kick things off with my top five

1 - Give me a ballpark figure. You're not an American, you've never been to America, and you certainly couldn't wax lyrical about the Bonds Balco controversy, Pete Rose and the Hall of Fame, Jackie Robinson, whether the Dodgers should have ever left Brooklyn or if someone will ever break Joltin' Joe's consecutive games with a hit record - so STFU and use 'estimate' instead

2 - Bleeding Edge. None of what you say/sell/resell is 'bleeding edge'. If it was, I wouldn't be talking to you - cos I work for a police force and everything we implement has to go through 85 thousand approval checks before it can be implemented by us. So sell me the frickin Firewall I asked for - not a goddamn UTM appliance that combines an SPI, ALF, IDS&P and makes the poxy coffee.

3 (my own personal most-detested right now) Mashup Technologies. God I hate this one. Its a poxy term hijacked from moronic brats on council estates who think they're rude bwoys to describe something that is basically little more than another way to describe Middleware. Except that its 'Internet-centric', so is actually akin to friggin Snake Oil.

 

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Hmmm...let's see.

Bandwidth: Such as "I don't have the bandwidth to take on another project right now".

Getting Traction: As in "Our new product is getting traction in the current market space (and "market space" is probably also a buzzword)".

Tasked: In other words, "I've been tasked by my manager to write the white paper for our new product".

How's that?

 

Another American baseball metaphor.

 

I used to work in advertising and the pillocks that earn far too much and shove most of it up their noses are full of things like that, such as

Let's raise the anchor and let the idea drift

Just tell me you don't like it and stop wasting my time, ya landlubber

Let's touch base...

I don't even want to go to first base with you, plonker

We've got to think outside the box here...

What box? Box of what? Maltesers? Styrofoam? Box your bloody ears in a minute chummie!!!!

We've hit the ground running with this concept

Aye, someone's gonna hit the ground in a minute!!!

Are we all singing from the same hymn sheet here?

Yes, I'm doing a cracking rendition of Amazing Grace and you get me a brew, NOW!!!!!

Rant over, kettle on

 

Singing from the same hymn sheet is one of my hates. If anyone has actually been to church they'll know what a painfull and chaotic effect gan be produced by a roomfull of people who are doing exactly that. In different keys, pitches and timing.

Anyway, mine aren't actually buzzwords - just phrases that seem to have been invented to make sentences longer.

'to be honest with you' - I'm lying to you.

'between you and me' - I'm lying to you.

'in all honesty' - I'm lying to you.

etc.

Why should anyone need to qualify a statement with something like 'to be honest with you'? Does that mean that by default everything else is a lie?

You can have fun making up your own buzzword sayings and see if anyone spots them:

'Lets run this hymn sheet up the flagpole and see if it's in the ballpark.'

Chances are, nobody will.

We used to play a game in management meetings. If you know someone who is particularly bad with this sort of thing, you can amuse yourself by writing down all their buzzwords. We then used to make bingo cards where you could cross them off. The trick is how to signal your mate that you've got a house without attracting anyone else's attention.

My suggestion is to do something subtle like drop your pen, as I can say from experience that jumping up and shouting 'HOUSE' is generally not well received.

We also used to make up bizarre words or phrases and challenge each other to fit them into our presentations. Hours of fun...

 

If anyone starts firing a lot of buzzwords at me in a conversation, I just switch off and nod my head at random intervals

 

Is the server back up yet? / Has the server gone down? - Question from random users when they cant do a *simple* task or the database stutters for a split second.

We could use triggers for that couldn't we? - A terminology overheard by managers, who now think that "Triggers" can fix everything in the world, and are the answer to all life's questions.

Cant think of too many at the moment, but im sure i'll hear a few thoughout the the week so i'll be back!

 

Another personal 'favourite' of mine is when people say something like 'I just want to talk to you re. the Hopkins account....'

Re.?

You are not a text message nor an email. Is it really that much effort to pronounce the other 7 letters in that word, or are you too busy for that. Failure to say whole words does not denote you are too much of a high-flyer or too dynamic to acknowledge the basic principles of polite conversation and actually speak properly, ir really denotes the fact you are a tw@t and probably say things like 'crucial' when something is good.

(Note: If that applies to anyone here, I apologise, I am sure at heart you are lovely people)

 

As soon as i started to read this I thought of Gus from the tv show
drop the deady donkey (tv show about a tv news channel)

 

Scalable used to be the big IT buzzword for a while. Anything you bought had to be "scalable". I think my last cell phone was advertised as being "scalable".

Downsizing is another term I can't stand... or any other related euphemisms to soften the term, such as "laid off", "let go", "reduced", or "made redundant". Can nobody other than Donald Trump say "fired" anymore? Also see: smartsizing and rightsizing.

At the end of the day... Sales people like to use this one a lot. But you know what? At the end of the day, if they haven't made their sales, it don't mean squat.

Paradigm and paradigm shift. Need I say more?

Synergize and synergy - who comes up with these terms?

Vision statement - useless fluff that sounds all well and good, but is largely ignored after it is written because of the unending focus on the bottom line. Also see: Mission statement If companies preached what they routinely practiced, their vision/mission statements would say nothing more than "To make (and pocket) as much money as possible." Honesty - it's a lost art.

 

One word thats being bandied around work at the moment is "meritocracy".... I had to look it to see if it was a real word. Even the bloke who originally coined it hates it now.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,514207,00.html

 

Going forward.

Then everyone runs off in different directions. Which way is 'forward' then?

It's all pretend. Pompous tw@ts

J.

 

Going forward... forward in time, perhaps. That's sorta mandatory (for now).

 

It may be mandatory chum, but it's still relative.

J.

 

Current IT related ones are:

'Let's take this discussion off-line' or 'Let's put this discussion on-line'???? WTF?

 

I think all of these buzzwords have been created to keep someone in a job, there will always be some brainwashed manager who will fall for them hook, line and sinker

 

All of this crap is what I hate so much about my current job.

I'm surrounded by morons who can't even conduct a conversation yet are running a company with a multi-million pound turnover.

To add to those above

Put this on your radar

Incentivise

engage colleagues

process mapping

KPI's key performance indicators

no brainer

heads up

best practice

networking (as in talking to people)

facilitator

bottom line

keep me in the loop