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

Oh yes.....

Dashboard. That's some kind of way or thingy to see how you are getting on with your work. They love having a dashboard for their KPIs

My old organisation's bosses had a 'bird table' meeting. That was annoying.

My old boss used to say top banana too. And he wasn't joking.

Anyway. None of it is rocket science is it?

We're using "Agile" at work

Just a little one, but I really hate cohort.

Mandraulic.

Anyway. None of it is rocket science is it?

Rocket Surgery innit.

I hate this stuff. It infects healthcare as well. I have been known to reply to memos or interrupt in meetings with " I have no idea what this means, can you please repeat in english"

[img] http://www.tdpri.com/attachments/reach-out-png.296338 [/img]

Ha, rocket science. My team could build a rocket, no bother. But the physics of academic herding is a lot harder to understand and not even the world's most advanced mathematicians claim to be able to predict UK visa policy changes.

Off at a slight tangent but TJ's comment ^^^ triggered a memory from nnnn years ago.
Working for a company delivering services to the MoD; first major meeting I attended with the client - end of meeting my boss asks what I made of it - responded '...for most of the meeting I didn't know what anyone was talking about because of the near total reliance on acronyms' - Oh....
Not long afterwards we were given the acronym buster - a bound document which must have covered 50 pages of A4 double sided with the caveat that '....it's not complete......'
Using acronyms unnecessarily presents the mundane as important and is used as a barrier - ffs 😆

Wonderful work, thank you all very much.

Monkeysfeet, the forum now has a PM function if you need it 🙂

'Break Out' meetings - when what it really means is 'let's have another meeting with some different people as we've no clue how to do this and then it'll be their fault'.
See also 'Take that offline', 'Put that on the back burner', 'Let's park that one', etc

Nice BS generator here:
[url= http://www.bollocksphere.co.uk/Content/generationtable.shtml ]BS Generator[/url]

Used to work with a bloke who frequently ended a meeting with 'let's bust this dam!', which was irritating.

Just opened this up - "The role of the 'Think Print' Auditor will be to conduct a survey on the printing devices around all of the locations. They will be engaging with our self-nominated Print Champions to gather information on the pros and cons of your daily printing experiences."

@frankconway

Get with the program! They're not acronyms, they're TLAs

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

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.

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

The counter to that is "wow, you still see a box?"

My old boss used to say top banana too. And he wasn't joking.

I get "top draw" occasionally. Naturally it gets countered with STW-grade pedantry.

@flashinthepan - wow, so american; the country of origin for all of this nonsense..... 😛

Just to add - acronyms can be 2 or more letters so TLA is just another example of extraneous additions; a superfluity of letters, if you prefer.

If anyone hasn't watched W1A.... it's basically a televised version of this thread:

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

Many years ago I did my year out from university at a major oil company. At one point during the year the company hired a management consultancy firm and began a reorganisation. During this the permanent staff went on a training course. One of the phrases that they came back with was:

"We have to move the dot to happy land"!

They spent millions on crap like that.

The dog's breakfast one I first heard from Microsoft where "Eating the dog's breakfast" was used by their engineers to describe them having to use the company's development tools.

The dog's breakfast one I first heard from Microsoft where "Eating the dog's breakfast" was used by their engineers to describe them having to use the company's development tools.

Close - the term is "dogfooding", as in "eating your own dogfood". We're encouraged to use "dogfood" editions of apps, software etc. So my Android Outlook and Skype apps are the "dogfood" editions. They tend to get updated every few days, have the odd bug and include ways of reporting problems.

I always preferred "gargling your own champagne".

Some of these are brilliant...

I'm going to take some of the best ones and place them on the top shelf of my thought fridge, so I can snack on them later.

Blessed be the fruit 8)

These have certainly given me some idea-butter to spread on my brain-crumpet.

I once worked on the [s]outages[/s] shutdowns at Hinkley Point B power station where the Station Director would start each of his meetings with "OK everyone, let's crack off"

for most of the meeting I didn't know what anyone was talking about because of the near total reliance on acronyms

I once worked for a civil engineering company. Halfway through a management update meeting the MD exploded at us for using "technical jargon." Then proceeded to waffle on about T-piece reducing flanges for the next half hour.

The technical jargon he objected to? "Intranet."

Working for a large US Pharma company we get bombarded with some of those already mentioned nearly everyday. My personal hates are:

'Town Hall' meetings
Putting ideas into a 'Parking Lot'

'Town Hall' meetings
Putting ideas into a 'Parking Lot'

Curate the swim lane backlog.

Arrrgh Town Hall meetings.

Working for a US company we get all sorts of sh*te.

I hear 'Glide Path','Line of Sight'and 'Let's take this offline' all to often. I do have a 'SMART Goal' set for the year titled 'Glidepath to Greatness'. Kind of meant in an ironic way but enough to get my U.S. overlords excited.

I should point out I'm actually doing that right now.

I also attend town hall meetings where global issues are flowed down. It's in a hall actually big enough to be a town hall, too.

I quite like "offline," it's a succinct way of saying "not in this conference call."

I shall of course disembowel myself with spears immediately.

Does your company start with B by any chance? The US Pharma company I do love their BS Bingo
We had a Town Hall meeting last week

No, starts with an M, but I'm guessing they're pretty much all the same when it comes to the b*llocks they speak 🙂

Offline isn't too bad IME - it gets used in our office at meetings but then there are several attendees who work from home so the meeting is "online" and it makes sense to use "offline".

I shall of course disembowel myself with spears immediately.

Bit extreme.

You should paint your left knee green or pretend your name is Keith.

If you work for a US company and don't understand the terminology I suggest setting up a Brown Bag Session one lunchtime to bottom it out.

Yes the good old brown bag sessions - aka working your lunchtime.

working your lunchtime.

Al desko

You should paint your left knee green or pretend your name is Keith.

People might think I was chicken.

People might think I was chicken.

or Richard Branson. He's bought a few jumbo jets in his time.

f you work for a US company and don't understand the terminology I suggest setting up a Brown Bag Session one lunchtime to bottom it out.

Alternatively simply reply "F***ing speak English!" or "Could you repeat that please, this time without the mismanagement bullsh!t"

aka working your lunchtime.

Surprisingly unpopular around these parts.

Offline isn't too bad IME

...when it is not used as a verb.

Although thinking about it, it probably works as a verb if you can pull off a good Schwarzenegger impression.

grooming the back log

If it makes you feel any better, this one is already out of date. The Yanks eventually realised that we use the word Grooming to mean something completely different. We now Refine the backlog.

This basically means that we chat regularly about the most import stuff that we need to do next so that everyone agrees the solution to the problem and is working as a team to achieve shared goals (like a team innit 🙂 ).

Anyone else who's organisation is transitioning to a more Agile way of working could do worse than take a look at [url= http://www.innolution.com/resources/glossary ]The Innolution Glossary from Ken Rubin[/url] for reference.

"Our Sales Team have been kicking down doors with our IP arsenal."

From CEO on a company call.

"Kicking around our collaborative football."

From a not very good techie who was promoted to a less dangerous position but is still allowed to meet customers 🙁

One of my mates is in IT in Whitehall and recently was going on about moving into agile delivery and becoming a scrum master.

Is grooming the backlog the same as polishing a turd?

In either the literal or figurative sense.

One of my mates is in IT in Whitehall and recently was going on about moving into agile delivery and becoming a scrum master.

I'm a project manger, and in my experience, "agile" is often used as a euphemism for failing to plan adequately and just making sh*t up as you go along.

I was accused of "sipping from buttercups" When i asked WTF that meant, the response was your going for the easy sales.

Well of course I am FFS !

I caused a hushed moment recently when exposed to management BS but pointing out to said manager that you don't fatten a pig by measuring it.

I was a great fan of the simple, but completely in denial, use of the phrase "Negative Growth", e.g. " in quarter 2 we went through a period of negative growth"

This is from a CEO of a ****ing massive company, but he still wore button collar short sleeve shirts with a tie, and spoke like a computerised version of Gareth Cheesman. 🙂

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

😯 you're a teacher at Hogwarts aren't you?

I think we need to revolutuonise the thought wheel in order to demystify the process.

stir frying ideas in the strategy wok

When I worked for one of the big four consulting firms, I was once tasked with 'being the guardian of the idea pool' which sounded important. What it actually meant was taking the meeting minutes.

I'm a project manger, and in my experience, "agile" is often used as a euphemism for failing to plan adequately and just making sh*t up as you go along.

'being the guardian of the idea pool' which sounded important

No, no it didn't 🙂

No, no it didn't

Luckily i got out before the 'Kool-aid' took hold. It was like the moonies 🙂

😯 you're a teacher at Hogwarts aren't you?

Not far off.

4 pages and no one has touched base yet?

All large companies are the same, that's why everyone understands Dilbert irrespective of which organisation they work for.

We are all over 'values' and looking at everything through a lens as in 'we need to look at this through a customer lens'.

This is my current favourite Dilbert

[img] [/img]

One of my mates is in IT in Whitehall and recently was going on about moving into agile delivery and becoming a scrum master.

Treasury are absolute rotters for communicating everything in Agile-speak.

I'm afraid I'm comfortable with and use most of the stuff in this thread ( 😳 ), except "swimlanes", which for some reason I just cannot transition to my BAU lexicon.

We used to have to write up our review of the year, plus our "goals" for the next year. For a laugh I would always chuck in a few totally made up words or phrases. They were very rarely ever picked up on.

Guys this is quality, I failed an internal interview last year for 'not using enough buzzwords', I can now go armed into the next one 😀

I have an idea that by my next PD review I may have ring-fenced a unicorn or two and maybe boiled an ocean.

I'm happy to honeybee on that.

Erm...

CFH, it's a buzzword.

😆

My director this morning: "It's a can of worms which should self-cleanse...."

I think there's going to be a lot of this in my future, (not that there hasn't been a lot of it already). I start a new job, sorry, role soon, and, according to my new boss:

will concentrate on our client proposition, his initial task will be to take the outline client vision to the next level and own it on behalf of our team.

will concentrate on our client proposition, his initial task will be to take the outline client vision to the next level and own it on behalf of our team.

Which means they don't have a clue what to do, expect you to do the detail for them but you will get a shoeing if they don't like it.

IHN - Member

will concentrate on our client proposition, his initial task will be to take the outline client vision to the next level and [b]own it[/b] on behalf of our team.

You have bombers. You know what to do.

I hear a lot of this nonsense, but the best comes from a conference call a couple of years ago; "It is essential that we aggressively pull on some positive change levers". Made perfect by the American pronunciation of 'levers'.

adiabatic synergistic module deployment

It's all journeys and stories these days round here. And other flowery **** to avoid actually having to DO it.

These have certainly given me some idea-butter to spread on my brain-crumpet.

I actually love this!!

In my last role we needed a deep-dive dirty review in order to network more positively; intra-team rather than the previously negative, process-driven silo working we had initially envisaged as a foil to the now negatively perceived, but nevertheless customer-focused client interface. That silo-working was exposed as having a negative effect on the resource-hungry, yet additionality-driven working practices, which themselves were threatening to drive down performance, despite the insistence on co-location and cross-agency collaboration. The partnerships and networks themselves, despite focusing on the coal-face delivery of upstream preventative strategies, created the need for break-out tactical implementation groups to emphasise certain aspects of the various, but nevertheless shared annual strategic agendae, and of course required regular, district-wide reviews of the effects and benefits, especially in the more challenging super-output areas.

Armstrong and Miller 'Information'

It's all journeys and stories these days round here

And possibly a roadmap is involved in the journey?

NUrsing research love a slightly different sort of balderdash. Pseudoscentific jargon.

My favourite was "This utilises an ontological - hermeneutic approach".

I had to go to a dictionary to try to unravel what it meant. An english translation would be " this uses a story telling ( or narrative) approach".

A couple of us at work are finding the concept of "getting aircover" quite amusing i.e. getting a director's approval ahead of official sign-off

The other bugbear is reporting "metrics" which I make a point of rephrasing as "graphs and coloured boxes" (or similar reply)

@DEKER.....surely you didnt fail an interview......where i work its called defered achievement....

B.A.Nana - Member
One of my mates is in IT in Whitehall and recently was going on about moving into agile delivery and becoming a scrum master.
batfink - Member
I'm a project manger, and in my experience, "agile" is often used as a euphemism for failing to plan adequately and just making sh*t up as you go along.
finbar - Member
Treasury are absolute rotters for communicating everything in Agile-speak.

Altho you can usually decipher the BS, I didn't understand what Agile Delivery meant and had taken the pi$$ to a point where it wasn't appropriate to appear interested ('Scrum Master' I could sort of decipher or make some assumption of). Anyhow, he's an IT project manager like you and I'm a little bit proud of the fact that my best mate is actually responsible for some joined up writing in Whitehall. So, when some months ago I applied online for a replacement driving licence, they just took all my relevant details, photo, signature etc etc from my previous passport application. At the time I thought, "WOW, the UK.Gov departments working together in common sense, joined up, talking to each other type stuff to make my life easier". A few weeks ago he happened to mention it in passing as a by-product of a bigger project he was working on (something to do with biometric UK Visa IT systems) and I was like "bloody hell!, you, my mate, were responsible for that?".