Avoiding the pit of management speak (whilst knowing the company lexicon)

What happens to people in business today that makes them think that using the term “Singing from the same hymn sheet” is ever acceptable in any way?

Nothing, and I mean nothing gets my blood boiling quite like management speak. My colleagues at easyJet know this and for my ‘Secret Santa’ gift last Christmas, I was given a book by Graham Edmonds called ‘Bullshit Bingo’. The concept is simple enough; just take one of the bingo cards from the book into a meeting with you (so much more fun if you have a friend doing it too) and mark off any of the expressions that you hear during the meeting. Once you have a line of marked off squares, yell at top voice “Bingo!” whilst holding your card aloft. (I won’t be held responsible for any P45s issued as a result of playing.)

So what gems should you be looking out for? Take a look at this list (in no way exhaustive) and see which ones you hear in your daily working environment:

• The genie is out of the bottle
• Let’s talk about this offline/off piste
• A rising tide that lifts all boats
• Going forward
• Get our ducks in a line
• Thinking outside the box
• Working in silos
• Dovetailing
• Different levels of honesty (a personal favourite)
• Low hanging fruit
• Listen loudly

Needless to say, I could go on and I hope that some of you will share your favourites in the comments section.

Can we get by in business without being sucked in to the use of this dubious language? Of course we can. There is a chasm of difference between knowing the lexicon of our specific business to using these BS phrases to make ourselves sound so dreadfully important. Knowing how to use the former will help you to enhance the reputation of your communications department whilst the latter could be seen by some as a desperate need to look important whilst not achieving very much at all.

On that note, I am going to interface with my core business leaders to do a gap analysis on my knowledge base.

Steve

Comments

[Mark Mazza]

Touch base - as in, "let's touch base" or "can we touch base on that next week?" ?!!!

[Sue]

We've talked about this topic a few times on here - I think it keeps coming back because companies just never learn ...

Steve, to add to your bullshit bingo book, try this site

http://www.atrixnet.com/bs-generator.html

And the Plain English Society's Golden Bull awards are worth a look if you're ever looking for examples

http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/bull07.htm