We are all guilty of occasional jargon abuse.
After all, we must adapt to our surroundings. Assimilate. Seek to be understood.
People in this strange land we call ‘work’ utter ritualistic phrases that produce knowing looks from fellow cube dwelling knowledge workers. Occasionally, we sense a subliminal roll of the eye. It is barely perceptible but we will not be deterred!
I recently facilitated a workshop during which the group captured their list of corporate jargon, overused terms and common buzzwords that have crept into our regular vernacular. Creating the list seemed to be a cathartic exercise. But we all had to admit personal culpability in perpetuating this weird patois.
Whilst some of these terms should be banished forever, may are harmless, event effective. It is the regular rotation we find annoying. Eventually, the meaning is so watered down we are left with mere sounds as banal as the dentist’s waiting room.
The List
The Challenge
- Create your list. (thought starter above)
- String your terms together to create a ‘sensible’ sentence you could deliver in a meeting (with a straight face)
- Submit your sentence in the comments with a tally (#) to follow with the number of terms you managed
- Await the results. Winner takes all. In this case nothing :)
Examples
To be honest, at the end of the day there is no silver bullet. (3)
I need to take this offline to validate our out of the box iteration. (4)
We now have our ducks in a row with our holistic future focussed world best practice strategy. (5)
Utilising our client centered secret sauce we will walk the talk and eat our own dogfood to smash it with our sector-focused brand. (7)
