[Closed] Todays 'Buzz' management phrase...

We need to ditch the waterwings and dive in.

I'm hearing a lot of Americans using edification instead of education.

Making things more or less granular is popular in my office too. As is 'gripping' things.

I'll pop that in the ideas fridge and snack on it later.

when you get really granular can you grip it?

If you don't get that get your upward mobility documents in checks and Fox trot oscar

Not really management speak, but how about the way apparently everyone starts and answer to a question or an explanation with "So..."
Gets up my pipe, so it does.

How about '....socialising the solution...'

And apparently Capability is the topic of the decade?.

I'm hearing a lot of Americans using edification instead of education.

everything at our place is about 'engaging' with clients / co-workers / processes (all of which must be very 'robust') and starting dialogues - rather than just speaking to people / doing something

And apparently Capability is the topic of the decade?.

This.

Also 'fundamentally', used between every other word in a sentence.

To counter this, we've got a big schools science event on today, I've been going around telling all concerned that it's *in brilliant. Renishaw have brought the printed titanium Empire bike and a load of demo pieces, going to see if I can blag a go on it later. *in brilliant. I need to go back and see if I got away with getting another company to 3D print me a glow-in-the-dark namebadge that says BAWBAG. [i]****in brilliant[/i]

Our client likes us to have a lot of granularity, top-slicing and wants us to consume our own smoke.

No, me neither.

Yes but you are Scottish Northwind and expected to swear like trainspotting

"take it to Z-space"

take it to Z-space

Minutes after being told "don't discuss this with anyone" I get an email from the SMT saying "we should all strive to be as transparent as possible"

Made me chuckle

I'm a long time pacifist, I suppose in many ways I'm a bit of ageing hippie.

But I had a boss who used to communicate by testiculating and trotting out terms like "granularity" and "chunk it up".

I wanted to punch them in the face.

a glow-in-the-dark namebadge that says BAWBAG

CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEA ALERT 💡

we need to spin up a team for this

i also have noticed members of staff become 'Resources', and now FTEs (full time employees), instead of 'People'. It really annoys me.

Granularity is an acceptable word to use if you're talking about level of detail.

that phrase he used is horrible though 🙂

oh, and another pet hate of mine is "capturing" something as in -

me: i know this is a bit off topic, i think we should do X....
Boss: that's a good idea, why don't you capture that and play it back later
me: you mean write it down and tell you about it in a bit?
boss: err...yes

But I had a boss who used to communicate by testiculating

Talking bollocks, one presumes.

Everyone is always on a journey as well. God knows when they'll get there....

Granularity is an acceptable word to use

We develop bespoke software to run our business and we use an agile process (which is quite americanised) this leads to phrases like:

"Great idea - add it to the backlog and get it prioritised" i.e. chuck it on the bottom of the pile
"Great idea - get it in a sprint and lets get a MVP out" i.e. do it now but only a very poor basic version
"We need to groom our backlog" - just sound creepy to a British ear!

Minutes after being told "don't discuss this with anyone" I get an email from the SMT saying "we should all strive to be as transparent as possible"

What's an SMT? 🙂

I can't help feeling that the reason the economy's bust is because no-one in work actually has any idea what anyone else is talking about anymore, so we're all walking around in worlds of our own having no real clue what anyone else does or what the overall plan is anymore, therefore nothing's co-ordinated and it's all fallen apart as a result...

I bet they didn't use this kind of language back when we had a manufacturing sector and Britain was Great 😉

@brooess Senior Management Team 🙂

Our industry/business is full of acronyms sometime more than one for the same thing! 🙁

What's an SMT

Welcome to TLA in education...It is rife with it.

We have GIRFEC as the in acronym and phrase.

If you want to be really annoying start pronouncing words from any "TLA Acronyms" you use.

Has this car got an ESP program and ABS system?

we use an agile process

What's an agile process? Apart from me during a rapid and unplanned dismount.

aP - Member

"take it to Z-space"

What does that mean?

i have no idea, but i've heard some project managers using it.

peterfile - Member
Granularity is an acceptable word to use if you're talking about level of detail

I mean, a grain of sand is quite fine detail if you're in a desert but there's an awful lot of atoms in each one if you look harder

"service users" or "clients"

It's a hospital, they're called PATIENTS you ****ing half-wit

Only if it's genuinely more descriptive than "overview", "very" etc when talking about level of detail

Aye, I wouldn't expect to hear "The recent article in The Sun on the best sauce to have with your bacon sandwiches was lacking in granularity" 🙂

An organisation that I do a lot of work for have an 800 page Acronomicon.

I heard a tale about granularity. May be apocryphal, but....

Some wag at Barclays decided to use it as much as possible to poke fun at all the other bullshit neologisms in use at the bank.

Within weeks everyone else was using it seriously!

We got asked to "think the unthinkable" last week. I don't know what the unthinkable is so I'm not sure how to think it. But if it's unthinkable to start with then surely it's impossible to think it in the first place? Eh?

Anyone else noticed it's usually the least competent and stupidest people you work with who use this kind of language the most?

you could take it all a step further peterfile - grancon1, 2 etc for different requirements. All the way up to full blinded tastings in the company canteen

We've been asked to rework a UI recently, so like it is now "... but on [b][u]Steriods[/u][/b] ..."

Sure, I'll get right onto that.

SMT is now old hat. SLT is where it's at.

We have an AJG (acronyms and jargon glossary) on our Intranet "dashboard".....
Helps us to identify which "toolkit" we need to use.

I have just got off a call on which I said with a straight face that; 'we need a common taxonomy to articulate the informational and process aspects of the delivery....' I may also have mentioned that we were on a 'journey'

I fear brooess is correct and I am part of the problem.

you could take it all a step further peterfile - grancon1, 2 etc for different requirements. All the way up to full blinded tastings in the company canteen

What's a company canteen?

probably a bit like our 'social heartspace'

'we need a common taxonomy to articulate the informational and process aspects of the delivery....'

I work in marketing so I'm not immune to this kind of guff myself.... but what did you mean exactly?

I suspect it's something to do with needing a dictionary. Ironically 🙂

What's a company canteen?

It's the hoi polloi equivalent of the Chardon d'Or

😀

I suspect it's something to do with needing a dictionary. Ironically

Pretty much, I mean the alternative is to justify the rate by delivering actual value 😉

Agile = making it up as we go along.

It's all about Passion here this week. Not as dirty as I'd hoped.

It's the hoi polloi equivalent of the Chardon d'Or

Boots meal deal for me today, scaredy 🙂

You tend not to hear any sort of buzz words around here, there aren't many opportunities to squeeze them in, although I'm currently working within someone from a japanese bank who says "let's just kick the can down the road" on absolutely everything he doesn't want to answer. English isn't his first language and he has obviously picked this up from somewhere, but he loves it!

Stick it on the laterbase. Going forward obviously, there's no going back.

the hoi polloi

Grrrrrr.

dictionary

Grrrrrr.

How are you on PIN number?

Back on topic....

My inner schoolboy does chuckle every time we talk about how we make our customers "sticky". Would make sense in several lines of work, but feels rather incongruous in a telco.

If you want to be really annoying start pronouncing words from any "TLA Acronyms" you use.
Has this car got an ESP program and ABS system?

I can confirm that TLA tautology is mildly irritating.

I get 'FEA Analysis' on a daily basis. What do they they think the 'A' is for?

Grrrrrr.

It's the (hoi polloi) equivalent of the Chardon d'Or

Customer: please provide pricing for (products), deal registration approval is in flight.

Me: please find attached pricing, let me know when the approval lands and I'll requote accordingly.

I hate myself.

I'm seeing a lot of "contextual..." in my daily corporate marketing [s]BS[/s] update today. I makes sense in the... context... they used it in, but I think they are getting a little too attached to it.

I've also been given credit for something that may go in front of customers. That scares me slightly, because I only had the idea, someone else wrote it. Still, as long as I don't go posting about it on the Internet, I'll be fine.

Agile = making it up as we go along

I'm a qualified scrummaster and I'll have you know I've never made it up as I go along*.

* not strictly true.

I'm quite pleased to say being agile involves throwing out microsoft project and replacing it with post-it notes.

Aaah Mr Scrummaster, a question if I may. I usually find when delivering via [s]making it up as we go along[/s] AGILE, our highers and betters still want fixed delivery milestones and key dates. How's that work then?

I'm quite pleased to say being agile involves throwing out microsoft project and replacing it with post-it notes.

[img] [/img]

😀 flash

I work for social services. During a reorganisation a couple of years ago, our director talked about "creating a single point of entry so that customers can be better signposted to alternative support agencies".
Roughly translated, "we're going to shut down all but one office and sack off a load of social workers, meaning less people can access support".

6 months later we made national news after ofsted found out 291 children who should have been seen by a social worker went unallocated.
People who use this language are arselings.

our highers and betters still want fixed delivery milestones and key dates. How's that work then?

Same way it did before, no?

our highers and betters still want fixed delivery milestones and key dates. How's that work then?

I refer you to Ron Swanson at this point:

"People are idiots"

George Orwell wrote an essay called 'Politics and the English Language'. Well worth a read, if only to realise lousy use of language is nothing new

From Wikipedia

The essay focuses on political language, which, according to Orwell, "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
Orwell believed that the language used was necessarily vague or meaningless because it was intended to hide the truth rather than express it. This unclear prose was a "contagion" which had spread to those who did not intend to hide the truth, and it concealed a writer's thoughts from himself and others.[3] Orwell encourages concreteness and clarity instead of vagueness, and individuality over political conformity.

no one 'running it up the flag pole' these days tch 🙂

As well as GIRFEC there is HGIOS

At the moment we have "we'll see what were about"

About to what? There's not even a "we'll do this then......."

There were weekly briefing sessions first thing on a Monday morning with all staff at the plant.

One week, my boss, sanctimonious ****, gave a briefing full of acronyms and management bingo speak.

About three minutes into the brief, one of the shop floor employees put her hand up and asked to speak.

She said that she didn't understand what she was talking about, everyone laughed and clapped.

Needless to say the brief ended there, the look on my boss face was "priceless".

It's a wonder how the MBA curriculum manages to keep up with all the latest jargon. Except of course it doesn't because it creates it instead.

Ahead of the curve, they used to call it...

One buzz phrase that always amused me, and there were plenty in a USA company wth emphasis on Lean.

The water spider.

Someone who takes ownership of multi tasks within a process, God I sound pretentious even repeating the jargon.

So glad I'm out of it now.

Must get around to ending my LinkedIn profile. Loads of people liking articles with plenty of today's jargon, and writing more prentious articles.

My old boss had signed up to about 40 "professional" interest groups and she didn't have a clue.

Hey ho ( that's an old fashioned management speak......)

I would put 'digitalisation' top of the buzz word list. Want your project / budget / conference paid for. Say it's 'digital' or 'digitisation of the enterprise' related and it gets paid.

* I used to be an IT consultant, now I am a digital consultant 🙂

Oi naff off! I 'work' in the digital space <sigh>

Can I digitise GIRFEC?

"Multi initialize and take a 360 degree view of the issue." I am happy to be shot for that one.

We also have a lot of "well, we are where we are" going on at the moment to account for a project being farked. Well, thank you, I understand we are here, because I can see you and unfortunately here the torrent of meanigless drivel falling out of your mouth. I think, to continue the analogy, we need to be somewhere else as whilst being here we appear to be buggered "here" and simply highlighting that we are standing in a corporate sink hole isn't helping

And as far as I'm aware, the world of corporate business development has very little to do with tending orchards so I may have to have stern words with the next person who talks about "low hanging fruit"