"Proactive"

When I hear that, I know that whatever they're peddling is full of crap, it's going to fail, and it's going to cost a lot of money and man-hours to discover that.

Oh, and that when it fails, I'll get blamed for it failing.

Because I wasn't "proactive" enough.

There's so much bullshit spoken in the corporate world, I don't know where to start...

Tell you what though, one of my favourite pastimes whenever I'm at a conference or meeting is playing "bullshit bingo" and mentatlly crossing off all the cliches like "thinking out of the box", "pre-eminent supplier", "new paradigm", etc etc. Great fun!

Mike

The use of 'blue skying' in a corporate sense gets right on my tits.

The most unnecessary use of corporate/business-bullshit speak I've heard locally was someone referring to Google as a 'discrete sortation device'

Corporations and educational organizations have unfortunately managed to do some sort of Vulcan-mind-meld (unfair to Vulcans, I know). We hear this garbage all the time at our institution now. Here are some quasi-corporate words that I would gladly never hear again.

Shared governance - means nothing, the administration still does exactly as it pleases - it's only trotted out to try to decieve the innocent into believing that faculty/staff and students actually have a say in important institutional matters.

Also:
Bottom line
Oversight - it may be needed, but not in the way they do it here.
Value-added
Task force
Outcomes - what, the word goals wasn't 'sexy' enough?
Entrepreneurship or E-ship - a new one but just as noxious

I could give more examples but I need to go settle my stomach down.
End of rant.

Buzz words as a phrase in and of itself
Mission statement - both the phrase and every single one I've ever read
Blue Sky Research - great if you ARE a rocket scientist, or an aeronautical engineer. I worked doing "blue sky research" down a microscope and in rooms with NO external windows for 3 years.
Corporate values - does the corporation actually have a value other than making money?
-i(s/z)ed words. Incrementalised, productionised etc. there are nearly always clear alternatives without nasty neologisms

I have escaped the corporate speak and I am glad, if a little lighter of pocket! I close my ears when my bullshit-corporate-phrase-o meter alerts me to the dangers. I can spot a corporate at a hundred paces! However the creative arts do have their annoyances especially in the production office.

Sentences indiscriminately seeded with "BasicAllY" and "if you catch my drift". As a designer and events coordinator I find aimless gesticulation and adamant exclamations of "You Know" a tad unproductive. Do I know? Me designer not psychic. And just because you make bigger gestures or jab the table with greater firosity I can't read your mind any clearer. Wishy washy ness..... deep breath!

The corporate speak in a way is the aversion to just that, they are the words that replace the... I know what I want to say but have no word... so I'll make one up. Its a calm, measured calculated regurgitation in the attempt to spare the room the waffle of verbalizing a concept. This combined with the aura of snugness that accompanies many users of these phrases creates the corporate speak package.

Once it's out there these corporate speak words and phrases can take on viral proportions and before we know it ... they are the words and phrases that haunt every meeting. And they creep in to our own vocabulary.

Well thats my rant! Chris is right it is making me feel angry thinking about it. I am going to stop now and have a cup of tea.

CJ

When people ad the 'age' on anything.
Oh we need new SignAGE, or did you see that Post'age'....and the use of it Overides me. I no longer hear a word that person is saying.
I've been in Sales and Marketing for over a decade, and I know when I hear a PITCH.
When someone comes up and says 'Hey, got a min?" it's usually because they want something from me, or they want me to help them Sell something. My brain has been fried, and lemme tell ya, I've had over a year out of Corporate, the Suits, the "APPEARANCE" of someone APPEARING to be a sales person.
Like Attracts Like. Takes one to know one, it's obvious when someone is selling Themselves...and we are all too familiar with the 'artificial ego' many people have in order to promote themselves or a product they believe in.
A good sales person
stays away from cliches
is relaxed
talks to you like they actually give a flyin fuck
doesn't focus on JUST the product.
know what i mean?
WE NEED TO SELL SELL SELL
(i hate that)
we need to RELAX.!.
I know this was a bit off the beaten path, but for me, kinda ties in with the Over Used Corporate Cliches and as I saw someone say BULLSHIT words.
Haaaaa

I have three words for you..... "low hanging fruit". Seriously, every time someone says this to me in a meeting, I lean over to the person next to me and whisper "Doesn't that sound a little dirty?" No really, I actually do that. They either laugh or they never sit near me again.

Some of these are so funny...anyway here's mine..

'Values' - The amount of times I've wanted to shuff a dictionary in someone's face when they say this one.
'Vision' - Remind me what we're looking at again??
'Look at the bigger picture' - If you can't get it right now, how on earth can you look anything bigger?
If your line manager says 'how you doin, let's chat' - usually means you've fucked up.....run a mile!!

Gotta laugh!

This is going on even in the government sector.

We've had a series of "task-forces" that have been looking at our "vision" so that we can have full "community buy-in" to our current activities. We have an active "strategic planning" committee to help us develop our focus for the next few years. They've developed a "proactive" concept that they call "walk-around management" so that our people can better connect with their supervisors.

Oh for crying out loud.

Probably too many things (esepcially on a Friday) but a few of the words/phrases that really annoy me:

- self-starter (eh? who would want someone that needed to be started...?!)
- road map - they are for when you are driving your car, right? Why does everything else need one?
- 'e' everything - a bit like 'i' everything - does this make it faster, trendier, more effective or just sound like it might be
- job evaluation - an excuse not to pay you more
- vision, mission and our statement of values - yeh, yeh, right - we all believe it

That's enough for one afternoon - need that cuppa!

In business and in the real world, I'm still irked by "at the end of the day."

Cliches and timeworn turns of phrase are destructive and limiting. I can see their shorthand value, but when they become a crutch for actual communication, they need to be put out to pasture, hung out to dry, taken to the glue factory and have the final nail driven into their coffin.

Capiche?

drives me nuts when i hear people use task as a verb - as in "I was tasked with the job of ...." Or "My boss tasked me with..."

task is a noun. The boss told you to do something - don't try to escape the inevitable fact that you have a boss and yes, they can tell you what to do. Task as a verb just makes you sound pretentious

Kim (off to rant at students who don't do the little jobs I task them with

There are many corporate buzz words that simply make me cringe and want pull my intestines out, but the most recent buzz word that takes the cake is:

DNA as in "this is part of our DNA" or "this is our DNA" GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!