Week Ending: The A-Z of business buzzwords
“GOING forward” into 2015, it felt like a good time to dust down our A-Z of the hideous, but all too frequently used corporate buzzwords.
Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section below. If we have enough submissions we may be able to publish a kind of business-speak equivalent of Roger’s Profanisaurus in time for next Christmas.
If you are a PR firm and you’re reading this, please take note. If you are an executive with an MBA or dare we say it a business consultant, we fear all may be lost….
Enjoy:
A: accretive. across the piece, annual leave (holidays sound too much like fun)
B: blue sky thinking, best of breed, buttoned-up, bandwidth (when used outside telecoms), buy-in (approval), burning platform (aka being up the creek without a paddle), boil the ocean (waste time), backfill
C: core competencies; c-suite, circle the wagons (get together)
D:drill down, deep dive, dialled-in, in our DNA, deliverables, ducks in a row
E: energised, escalate, ecosystem
F: freemium (hybrid of free and premium), foodchain
G: going forward, granular, game-changer/ing
H: headwinds
I: innovative (who isn’t?), issues (never mention problems!)
J:journey
K: kicking the tyres
L: low hanging fruit, leverage
M: monetise, mumtrepreneurs (yuck), matrix (they’re everywhere)
N: no-brainer
O: offline (when used instead of ‘in private’ as in “Hey Todd, let’s get granular on the project, but it’ll have to be offline), on your radar, on board, open the kimono (a particular favourite in the US)
P: paradigm shift, pinchpoint, piggyback
Q: quantum – of solace yes for James Bond, but not for everyday business-speak please!
R: revert, rolling the dice, right-sizing, run rate, reach-out, ramp-up, receivables
S: stakeholders, sustainable grip, sweet spot, sunset – as in ‘let’s sunset that idea’, solution (so overused it’s meaningless)
T: traction, teach-in, touch base, to transition (dismiss)
U: up-skill
V: vertical channels, value-added
W: workshop (when used as a verb eg: “James, we need to workshop that project “)
X: a tricky one – X-Ray – a forensic accountant may X-ray one’s expenses perhaps?
Y: yield -a modern classic
Z: As I reached the end of my “thought shower” for this corporate A-Z I was forced to research a Z in desperation and found ‘zero cycles’ – which is a technical and obtuse phrase for declining an invitation.
