[Closed] Hit me with your best examples of management bollocks speak.

[i]Firstly, we have signed a transformational outsourcing deal with xxxx which will deliver an increase to our cost synergies from the £112m per annum in 2013, which we will still hit on time, to £143m per annum by 2015. This deal de-risks the embedded value, contractualises the delivery of the cost synergies, and it de-risks the execution of our plans, allowing us to focus on the other opportunities we have as a business.[/i]

Beat that.

I think you need to evidence some of these riddles. Bring them to life a bit.

I don't care what any of it means

Well in that case;

'I'll sh1t in your slippers while watching you sleep'

Can you assess phasing the costings based on potential inflection points when choosing fungible solutions

I'm actually in a room with a Microsoft rep right now, he's currently 'envisioning the journey'

Ringfence his unicorn

The below is our office "bull.... bingo" list. It is very possible to get them all into 1 conversation if played well.

[i]??? piece (context, “we’re doing a lot of work on the data migration piece”)
Best in breed
Break through the clutter
Calibrate expectations
Class leading
Close the loop
Customer centric
Disruptive innovation
Elevator pitch
Fulfilment issues
Herding cats
High order thinking
It is what it is
Just doing my job
Leverage
Low hanging fruit
Mission critical
Money maker
Par for the course
Paradigm shift
Quick and dirty
Synergy
Thought leadership
Value add
Have a V2V
Bayonet the dead
Let’s not try and boil the ocean
Sometimes you have to shoot the puppy.
[/i]

Our Chief Operating Officer of the £100m a year turnover company I work for stood up the end of the last meeting I was at with him, a couple of weeks ago and said......

"Right, ya bunch o' ****s.....Let's do this shit!"

We sat in dazed silence, slightly dumbfounded, until he broke the spell by declaring....

"On ye go! Get tae f...."

Sorry, 8 posts in, and we've yet to get our ducks in a row?

"Going forward" makes my skin crawl. Not even really related to managers, most people seem to say it.
I prefer "in the future"

I have recently had the word "verbge" used to describe a block of text. Oh did the tapioca rise in my gullet.

jonnyboi - Member
I'm actually in a room with a Microsoft rep right now, he's currently 'envisioning the journey'

Oh shit fire, I think I've heard that one too.

'Pathways' are talked about a lot these days, I still don't know what they mean by that.

"Let's run it up the flag pole and see who salutes."

"Throw it at a wall and see what sticks."

Obviously "Ring fence the unicorn".

#edit

"Thought shower" has been a suggestion and we do seem to be going on a lot of "journeys" of late despite racking up no mileage.

one I hear a bit :

let's have a 'deep dive conversation'.....

“Let me give you my elevator pitch. We don’t go after the low hanging fruit or a quick and dirty offering, we break through clutter to leverage a class leading, customer centric solution to your fulfilment issues, we will calibrate your expectations to ensure you no longer expect par for the course. We’re not trying to boil the ocean here, it is what it is, but what we do is offer a paradigm shift that is a real value add money maker, this is mission critical work and we want to offer synergy between the client piece and the best in breed offering that you have. In truth this is thought leadership that means you’re not herding cats as you bayonet the dead. Let’s not try to build the ocean here, let’s have a V2V and I can explain the high order thinking that is really me just doing my job.

"flow down"

...like sewage.

Narrative seems to be used alot these days as in 'this the new narrative'.
'Anyhoo' annoys me particularly when used at work.
Systemic is overused IMO
'From the get go' makes me cringe - seems to be used alot by sports commentators as well

Was that an Amazon employee Iainc? We had an "operational top line reset".

Just start making up your own.

Let's feed this dog some beetroot.

work across the matrix

"Consultation" where i work means being told what will happen (whether we like it or not).

lunge - is that real?

The scary thing is that mine was 😯

"I hear what your saying" - I'm going to do eff all about it

Mister P - Member
Was that an Amazon employee Iainc?

nope, multinational consultancy

reorient information vectors

We have product 'landing zones' and 'swim lanes'. So many TLA's that we have a Skype chatbot to help decipher them.

digital transformation
takes this offline

Splatter the letterbox.

Perchy is full of win today.

Everything is 'stories' here. Presumably they're like journeys, but you don't need any bus money.

Sort of real, not verbatim but pretty close, I work in recruitment, we get this crap all too regularly...

Break out the emergency flags, we need to de-cream this cat.

My gaffer (not the culprit of this situation) yesterday either came up with or had heard/read 'Can I stir fry something in your think wok?'

'Can I stir fry something in your think wok?'

😯

Set Bombers to Own

The best bosses I've had were those who (co-incidentally?) talked in plain english because they understood the subject, had no need to try to impress and were confident in their abilities.

+1 for detesting 'going forward';

@lunge - good selection there; a few for your bullshit bingo.....thought shower, enhanced granularity (and any other type of granularity), step change (just because i don't like it).
+1 for envisioning, deep dive and pathways.

'Can I stir fry something in your think wok?

you owe me a new keyboard, this one now has extreme coffee ingress

Lunge wins the internet today for that masterpiece of management boll**ks.
It shows a real paradigm shift and a reset of expectations.

Some good ideas here, let's put them all in the car park for now and we can drive them away later.

I think nowadays you need to curate something too. It doesn't matter what.

Having been in the corporate world for many years I had heard most, accepted the validity of many, and used some buzz phrases myself.

But when I asked the vendor of a project management tool if they used it themselves I was startled to hear the straight-faced reply "Oh we eat our own dogfood".

Apparently, in some circles, it's well known.

There's always one that's doing the rounds, this weeks is solutionize.

The game is to make one of these words up and see how many people you can get saying it.

Was in a meeting not too long ago that involved discussion of shadow boards, headless sections and secret masters.

The place where I work has just had- no lie- a digital transformation week.

A digital....transformation....week....

We're a telco. We've not done anything non-digital* in at least a decade.

When I queried what the heck they meant, what they were actually all about was the usual post-millennial nonsense- basically, Twitter, Facebook, and a few other web-based 'communications' platforms are what we should somehow be majoring in.

I f'in hate them all.

Meanwhile, they're quietly making useful folk redundant.

My gaffer (not the culprit of this situation) yesterday either came up with or had heard/read 'Can I stir fry something in your think wok?'

I must clarify, this was proposed as something we could say to the Riddler, not used seriously by the utterer.

Richmtb...sounds like you work in the same company I do...where you based?

(not a suggested bingo phrase, a genuine question!)

Can I stir fry something in your think wok?

This has made my day - genius!!

Upcoming. BBC News has started using that FFS.

"Let have some blue sky thinking ... "

^^^ A bureaucratic micromanager just said to me/us ... I mean what blue sky it's always raining ... why not speak Mandarin to me at least I can understand that. 🙄

Next time I shall use my own bingo bullock - "One mountain is higher than another mountain" or " ... man sees deer as horse ..." ... that will learn them.

@ Lunge

-1 Point for repetition of "boil the ocean"

I'm with perchy utilise some stwisms preferable mixed.

Let's fire up the woodfired pizza oven and hoof it in the slats. Moving in having checked my jambafacts and with our Jeremy's in tandem we can choose the single-track of bomber ownerage or to sudo cream the magneto dog.

Oh my.

I work for a US global corporation and so don't even know where to start.

I'm going to start writing them down and will come back later properly armed. The crazy thing is that I've absorbed some of this and have become at least partially one of them. I at least have line of sight to a solution to this issue 😉

I used to have a CEO who'd vomit out corporate megaw**k on cue complete with unreadable charts, endless pointing at KPIs and a long talk about how we need to break out of silos.

Lovely guy, but I suspect only partially human.

I'm now thinking of either Gus from Drop the Dead Donkey or the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B, both of which date me badly. Luckily I miss out on all this poop IRL.

perchypanther
Just start making up your own.

We need to unzip that thinking, then button it up tight.

Let's find out what's throbbing on customers, then we can watch the growth.

13 years with American large corporation. I use most of the bad ones myself as I lost my soul long ago.

Newest one I've only heard twice is something like "not in my wheel span" as in not on our agenda type or not our problem. Could be an old saying too, I guess.

Let's crimp this off and wait for the splash

lol. these are great. I don't mind dog-fooding but I did splurt out my tea when someone recently unintentionally repurposed it as "eating our own s**t".

"[i]looping in the dev team to dive deep on this one[/i]"

"This one" being their utter inability to stop *ing things up that don't need to be **ed up by witless outsourcers who have hired a bunch of children straight out of university.

Distributing Clue to Users needs to be re-written for outsourcers.

When it is re-written I hope they still enclose a baseball bat with nails in it, mine is getting rather worn.

Let's get out the wet wipes and give it the final polish.

Greatape, knowing which service you work in I have some classics ,
but I could get in trouble 😀

One is - " The NDM -like a crap chippy, you don't want to be left with a manky piece of fish!"

Drill down

Square all our circles

Touch base

Let's cover this casserole with pastry and call it a pie

"The art of the possible" happens round here a bit.

"Who's holding the ring on this"

We are also doing digital transformation. A few of us got an iPhone! Locked down so much that you can't transfer photos onto a laptop via a cable. Have to email them to yourself!

I shit ye not.

We have product 'landing zones'

😆 reminds me of a customer who told me that his order was 'in flight' I responded with 'let me know when it lands' I felt both proud and dirty, like if had a heavy night of H&B

Let's cover this casserole with pastry and call it a pie

GTFO. This was a place of humour, not outright blasphemy. Too far PP. *shakes head with disappointment*

I work in a business that rarely gets new bullshit-bingo, we are still using old classics. But the latest "game" is to see how many wrong phrases you can drop in to a meeting. Get your ducks and flagpoles into the unicorns ringfence.

But the most refreshing quote came from our European Managing Director a couple of years ago during a site level team brief. He shows up to present board level news and strategy. He started with "I suppose you bunch of **** (see you next Tuesday's) want a ****ing pay rise?"

Accurate and straight to the point.

perchypanther - Member
Let's crimp this off and wait for the splash

Oh bravo sir, Bravo.

At my place senior management get a biscuit if they use the word "agile" in any context, I mean wtf is agile desk space?

"Going forward" makes my skin crawl. Not even really related to managers, most people seem to say it.
I prefer "in the future"

I totally agree. But like living in a foreign country and inadvertently absorbing the accent, it's so ubiquitous where I work that I've started saying it. Then I visibly wince and hate myself.

I was startled to hear the straight-faced reply "Oh we eat our own dogfood".

Apparently, in some circles, it's well known.

That gets used a lot at work too. Essentially means to use the products we sell internally. (Historically we've been really bad at it.)

Distributing Clue to Users needs to be re-written for outsourcers.

Euphemisms for cluestick application probably merits its own thread. In the networking world there's a "7-layer model" where layer 1 is the physical hardware (a cable not plugged in is a "layer 1 issue"), going up through layers of abstraction like IP addresses until you hit layer 7 which is "application," eg email. User error is colloquially a layer 8 issue. (By extension, layers 9 and 10 are sometimes management and legal.)

Let's cover this casserole with pastry and call it a pie

GTFO. This was a place of humour, not outright blasphemy. Too far PP. *shakes head with disappointment*

See, I think there's merit in this, if you're describing a dirty hack to pass off as something else. Like, you've run out of Smirnoff so you decide to pour Tesco Value vodka into empty Smirmoff bottles, tell everyone it's Smirnoff and hope no-one notices.

I mean wtf is agile desk space?

Hot desks perhaps?

I'm actually in a room with a Microsoft rep right now, he's currently 'envisioning the journey'

Ah, but were you in the Envisioning suite in our offices?

I really dislike the Envisioning suite, mainly because I'm not very good at saying "envisioning".

See, I think there's merit in this, if you're describing a dirty hack to pass off as something else.

Dude, that's my cultural heritage you're pissing all over there.

I'd expect it from Binners but I thought you were better than that 😉

We're using "Agile" at work. I've never encountered so many mixed metaphors: Swimlanes, sprints, scrums, burndowns and most worrying... "grooming the back log". wtf.

"Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining!" was a favourite in my last job, though no one had the balls to say it to one of the Managing Partners.

One that's stuck with me, on asking a colleague if he liked his new role within a large multinational, his response was "same shit different toilet"

Where I work they still say "thinking out of the box". Fantastic. Also...

Granularity
Resource envelope
Business critical
Get your arms around it (referring to a problem or task)
Horizon scanning
Activity language (strange term for a sort of time code)
Contribution statement (job description)
Grandparent manager (your bosses boss of course)

There are probably loads more. They are very annoying - but even those who hate such terms end up using them from time to time.

Granularity - ahhhhh!!! they use that at work when talking about computer systems - theres nothing granular about it its digital 0 or 1 FFS!!!!! ( however i am a mechanical so perhaps I am missing something)

In my office, overcoming seemingly impossible resistance is sometimes referred to with variants of "****ing it to death with a mechanical cock" I didn't put coining it in my appraisal, though. Originally it was a bronze cock but that didn't catch on.

grooming the back log

Wut?

I going to leverage

Let's fire up the woodfired pizza oven and hoof it in the slats. Moving in having checked my jambafacts and with our Jeremy's in tandem we can choose the single-track of bomber ownerage or to sudo cream the magneto dog.

Our divisional liaison from the University business transformation team came to talk to me about "timelines and delivery". I'm not sure why we as lecturers and researchers need to know the minutiae of the new finance system but never mind.......

Anyway she told me that they were "enabling endusers to maximise system efficiencies by front loading financial data". Basically, instead of our divisional secretary sorting expenses, travel, accommodation, etc. out in an orderly and consistent manner for the 100 or so people in out division, we all now have to sort and upload it ourselves so that the secretary can then approve it (as we, despite being responsible for managing our own budgets are only "level 3 approvers not level 2 as required".....).

Wanting to show how I felt about this complete shitshow of an process in language she would understand I suggested that she "crimp that one off and park it on the mantlepiece for everyone to admire". She smiled and actually said thank you as she had been meeting with resistance from other divisions. Once I explained what I really meant she had stopped smiling. Sigh.

I have to agree with a couple of others above, 'moving forward' is also one of my pet hates.

We had a classic last week though:

'We are now moving forward in a different direction'. What the _*££ are these people talking about.

I also hate overuse of 'essentially' and 'fundamentally' (which some people at my work seem to use as a starter for every sentence - oh - along with moving forward).

Arghhhhhhh