Storm watch: document your office's current buzz word

Yeah, it was slightly droll the first time but now I just want to punch you dick-head.

Examples

We need to get on the same page with this = Lets get our act together, alright?

Your review was good, but not great = we don't want to pay you more money, but want you to feel guilty, not us.

my boss can't stop saying "winner"

"confused.com"

i've heard "when the rubber hits the road" twice this past week.

also, in presentations, etc.: "the takehome here is..."

wow

"moving forward," ie forget about the fact that everything is shit at the moment.

right. "going forward"

^ ARG HARG HARG HARG HAGR RAHGR HAG RHG RHGRH AGRH GR HGRH

I have KILLED people for using that

"buy-in"

"terrorist fist jab"

From an email I got earlier today: "I'll draft a little proposal in the short term, but let's move forward with the outreach in the meantime"

outreach sounds like a handjob

Better "outreach" than "reach around" I guess...

Oh god I have actually found myself say "going forwards" more than once in recent years and hated myself for it, but yanno, sometimes you just can't be bothered and the crappy corp shorthand is just easier than the puzzled looks if you use a coherent sentence in regular english.

Which of course, is why these shit buzzwords take root to start with.

^ this

My current (and soon-to-be-previous) uses 'buy-in' a lot, but at least it has a context. It's not like 'going forward' which literally means nothing.

My current (and soon-to-be-previous) boss

Sunsetting (getting rid of)

Refreshing (updating, sorting out). As in 'This month we intend to refresh the Board' (kick off the old-timers and get in new people).

Brigading. As in 'We need to brigade the information if we want to gain the buy-in of the department to go forward'

Excellence. World-class. By 2010.

Sunsetting (getting rid of)

-- ljubljana, Sunday, 15 June 2008 16:33 (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Brigading. As in 'We need to brigade the information if we want to gain the buy-in of the department to go forward'

-- ljubljana, Sunday, 15 June 2008 16:35 (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Turning nouns into verbs is punishable by death.

Here's a European Commission one: variable geometry (different organisations doing this in, er, different ways).

Don't know if this is office-specific but I've never heard it outside of my old job - "used in anger" as in "this is the first time the new system has been used in anger so let's get ready to field those support calls, folks".

I hear that quite a lot not limited to the IT and broadcast world.

"activity", as in "we need to proceed with this activity ASAP" and "you must account for this week's activities on your timesheet". It's hard to take seriously, as the word puts me in mind of one of these:
Fi5h3r Pric3 Acti1v1ty C3ntr3

going forward is kind of ubiquitous now. ive heard used in anger a few times but actually outside the office. our most recent one has been Debrief but its kinda faded now not sure we really have one at the minute which means a new one must surely be on its way

although i feel theres less emphasis on these right now and wonder if some offices became selfaware about these things (also dont a lot of these come from the positivity teamworking companies that they get in to improve morale at boardroom level and then filter down?)

I feel like it creates self-importance on the part of management types who've been reading their "who moved my cheese" books and aren't that good at talking, so they just bandy around shit they know makes them sound all businesslike. I mean, at this point it feels obvious even pointing this out to be honest.

A few jobs ago, in fact, my team were dragged into a meeting with management where they pulled the whole "who moved my cheese" spiel on us. At that time I'd not actually heard of it, but it stank of buzzword so badly that when they finally stopped blathering and said "any questions?", I blurted out "so when are we getting fired?". My manager looked at us in horror and stammered "oh no no... that isnt happening... its not like that at all" and made reassuring noises.

We were all let go about 2 months later.

I'm embroiled in an endless to-and-fro debate between two managers more senior than me, one of whom want us to say we've 'solved' a particular problem, and one of whom recognises we've only just started to do something about it and is scared someone will call us on this.

Turning nouns into verbs is punishable by death.

-- Autumn Almanac, Sunday, June 15, 2008 9:30 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

What's wrong with a little nouning every now and then?

When I worked at 0rac13 they made us all read that ridiculous cheese book. We concluded that it meant we should all happily accept every kind of change the place threw at us, including giant rocks and lethal scorpions. Then it disappeared.

After a while they tried it on with that 'Fish' book and we straight-up said no, get stuffed.

fish book?

Some American book about some American fishmongers who sell American fish and devise American ways of being all corporate or something. Dogshit.

Here y'are, it's this horrible thing

A few months back, everything was "sexy": "Let's make this proposal sexy", "My Blackberry has a sexy little trackball interface."

It was only around for a few weeks, but Good God!

Oh man we did the Fish thing

thats 7 hours I'll never get back

Waterfront (=horizon)

A few jobs ago, in fact, my team were dragged into a meeting with management where they pulled the whole "who moved my cheese" spiel on us. At that time I'd not actually heard of it, but it stank of buzzword so badly that when they finally stopped blathering and said "any questions?", I blurted out "so when are we getting fired?". My manager looked at us in horror and stammered "oh no no... that isnt happening... its not like that at all" and made reassuring noises.

We were all let go about 2 months later.

This happened to me at my last tech industry job! One minute, management is highly recommend this great book about cheese, the next minute half my department was gone. Then a minute after that, I went with the other half.

Heard "onboarding" for the first time the other day. It was used to describe training/orientating/involving a new person into the organization and I hate it so much.

ljubljana, your workplace is buzzword city. Wow.

Public sector is pretty bad on that front.

Trust me, it's as bad when your edgy style magazine starts using MAYJ and AMAZE in headlines.

Why do office workers not get to embrace buzzwords like "bags o' fun", "fabu-delish", or "loverly jubbly"?

from this morning's mail already ( note it is only 9:30 in the morning)

"stand up" = provide, with a side order of commit to : Bob stood up some costs for Service Operations, John is going to stand up plans for rollout

"socialise" = talk to people to gain approval for a plan, a change etc

"looping in" = copying someone in an email.

Our company is also into onboarding staff, once we've reached out to them in the first place. Contact. The word is contact, ffs.

we do a lot of "onboarding" and "reaching out" as well, sometimes we "get with" people

metics, as in "if you can't measure, you can't manage"

that should be metrics

"we'll solution that later"

i'm flabbergasted by language like this.

a lot of it is just a system of fashion. the lingo changes in an evolutionary kind of way, and everyone in the game has to keep up.

but then a lot of it has a crucial masking function imo, like, the essential meaning of most of this shit is the giving and taking of orders and the assertion of authority, but since the big buzzwords in '11 office spaces are 'collaboration' and that kind of shit, there's a diplomatic passive-aggressiveness to it all

that should be metrics

― mizzell, Monday, 20 June 2011 11:27 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is a pretty good axiom. Six sigma would be nothing without it, although I'm deeply skeptical of it being applied outside of engineering and manufacturing.