Dysonology

View Original

Business jargon we all hate

Business jargon we all hate, by Tom Cutler of "The Gentleman's Instant Genius Guide" fame. Only criticism? He missed a few (paradigm, helicopter view, push the envelope etc). Anyway, enjoy: Here are twenty-five examples of hideous business jargon, with notes, and translations into English. Where does this rubbish come from?

1. Going forward: ‘in future’ 2. Seamless: nonsense 3. Global: ‘offices in more than one country’ 4. Blue-sky thinking: nonsense 5. Change management: sugar-coated mass sackings 6. Implement: ‘do’ 7. Team leader: ‘upstart’ 8. Consultancy: ‘money for old rope’ 9. Team player: code for ‘lacklustre and useless’ 10. Not a team player: ‘rude, selfish, and unpleasant’ 11. Think outside the box: a cliché revealing the user to be thinking inside the box 12. Strategy: a military term, which generally just means ‘plan’ 13. Actioning: ‘doing’, or telling someone else to do 14. Escalate up: take something to the/a boss. The ‘up’ is redundant 15. Leveraging: just horrible – verbing nouns weirds language 16. Manage expectations: make sure X knows how useless you are 17. Turnkey solution: unutterable nonsense 18. Upskill: ‘train’ 19. Pushing the envelope: a maths term reduced to nonsense by ignoramuses 20. Best practice: not putting a live toaster in the bath with you 21. Enabler: lazy boss 22. Facetime: hideous nonsense 23. Repurpose: hammer in nail with screwdriver 24. Robust: likely to come apart at any moment 25. World-class: about as crappy as everyone else