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I don't understand why business people do this to themselves. I quit working for large organizations in favor of smaller companies that pay less, because at least there's much less of this. It does get unbearable.
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Lingo is a powerful social tool. Once you know to look for it, you see it everywhere.
Some lingo is always necessary for jobs to communicate complex ideas quickly. Everyone has terms and phrases used in their profession that are exclusive to it, as well as some that are exclusive to their workplace. People outside of their job don't know the lingo, those inside do. In this way lingo is a double-edged sword: it eases communication, but creates a social barrier between those in the know and everyone else.
In an increasing number of places this isolating side effect has been used by certain groups as the motivation for them to contrive lingo. For a long time this was largely relegated to cults and other fringe groups that wanted to shore up the feeling of togetherness of the people within and keep them away from outsiders.
The big change was when groups found that by constantly changing the lingo they could induce two other effects: the exclusion of outsiders and exerting control over existing insiders. The MBA/business types are a prime example of this. For people in or seeking to be a part of the group knowing the latest buzzwords is a must, and not knowing them or using outdated ones opens them up to being ostracized. People who are "in" must constantly stay up to date, thus staying attentive to the trends of the group. At the same time people with a casual interest or interaction are actively dissuaded by how often unfamiliar words are used by members of the group.
This sort of weaponized use of lingo is much more widespread these days. Once you see it in this case you can find it in just about every flavor of modern political group and online forum. If you find a group that seems to always be changing its buzzwords, buyer beware.
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I couldn't understand what you were saying, you didn't use nearly enough lingo, so I translated it.
"Ah, the almighty power of lingo—like the Swiss Army knife of social circles. Once you're hip to the jargon game, it's like spotting Easter eggs in every convo. At work, lingo's the secret sauce for pushing complex ideas through the pipeline fast. But hey, here’s the kicker: it’s like having a VIP pass—you're either in the club or left standing outside.
Now, here's where it gets spicy. Some folks take that lingo and flip the script—they don’t just use it, they manufacture it like a startup cranking out MVPs. Back in the day, this was mostly culty vibes, fringe-y circles looking to get the 'us vs. them' mojo going. But then boom—the suits came in, turned it into a science, and voilà, welcome to Corporate Speak 2.0.
MBA-types are the real MVPs here. Knowing the latest buzzwords is like holding the golden ticket. If you're still rocking last quarter’s vocab, well, tough luck—you’re getting a one-way ticket to Outsider-ville. Gotta keep your buzzword game on point, always watching the trends, or else risk going full 'legacy system.' Meanwhile, casuals who just want to dip a toe in? They're hitting the eject button as soon as they hear 'synergize' for the tenth time.
But hey, it’s not just the corporate world—we've got weaponized lingo all over the place now. Find a group that keeps updating their lingo like it's firmware? Yeah, you might wanna run a virus scan on that one."
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The only thing I would disagree on is that lingo is a recent phenomenon. That's just recency bias.
The Catholic Church used Latin at mass from its inception to the mid-20th century, and the oldest Greek versions of the Bible already use some words we simply have never seen anywhere else.
Philosophers have always been a notorious PITA with using existing words or close derivatives of existing words with different meanings, sometimes the lingo is specific to a single author.
And let's not even get into judicial lingo and its very ancient and storied use of disenfranchising the less fortunate who did not speak it and could not afford a lawyer to speak it for them - that is when the court system wasn't in Latin.
Corporate lingo takes more room in our lives as large corporations take up more and more of the economic and political landscape (with some interesting evolutions in form thanks to the influence of Globish). That's it.
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I once got an email from an executive C-level who mentioned adding value at least four times in a single paragraph.
Annoying as hell because the email hardly contained anything of substance.
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That would be every e-mail from C-level.
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That's the special executive duckspeak.
I've gone from being righteously angry to bored and hopeless hearing the speech of some particularly skilled practitioners.
It's really kind of amazing how this kind of babble can have such an intense emotional impact while textually imparting almost 0 new information.
It's all about the vibes conveyed by the medium. Kind of like how trump talks in a way, come to think of it.
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I had a business professor who used "value add" constantly, to the point that I still can't hear that 20 years later without cringing. Our final project in his class was something like "look at a business and find a place where you can value add." That was literally all the guidance we got.
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I cannot tell you how many bosses Ive had/ heard say they are going to have a moment of "radical kindness" and then proceed to just RIP into their employees until they cry.
Corporate double speak is wack.
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This sounds quite specific for something you had to experience multiple times. Hope the people are ok and you found something better to work for.
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idk, I know that there are great companies to work for- my sister found a unicorn of a job. Great pay (and hourly), tons of vacation, work from home, a decent amount of travel but not too much (she's in sales for a scientific instrument company), but I have job hopped enough to know that what she has is now becoming the exception. And of course to your point, this is all anecdotal. I'm now self employed and I've never been busier nor happier.
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I’m picking up a scent of conservative-flavored grindset thinking, where since adversity and pain build character and resilience, I’m pretty much the best person I can be by being a complete piece of shit to those around me.
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We’ll circle back to this next week.
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With actionable deliverables
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To move the needle
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I'm fucking mad that I hear many of these every day and ENGLISH IS NOT MY FUCKING MOTHERTONGUE YOU FUCKING FUCKS
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Ping me
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Same, but to be honest.. attempts to migrate some words to your own language can also get very awkward.
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I'm in full swing of a job search and I painfully relate to this image
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No way, this is a great reference chart. All the actionables have been curated into one place.
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Agile and synergize aligned itself into this chat.
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For some unknown reason the phrase "thought leader" drives me crazy.
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How do you feel about “Leading thought leader”? 🤮
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Thoughtful leading thought leader.
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Are you a Theoretical Physicist?
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I have a theoretical degree in physics.
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Makes me wanna logout life
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Self-uninstall
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Unsafely eject drive
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My least favourite was my company motto of "Personal, Simple, Brilliant." It was supposed to be an ethos that ran through the whole company. It was actually just what management expected front line workers to be towards customers, regardless of whether the business leaders were making decisions to screw over the customer and the front line staff or not.
The amount of times I asked for support only to be shot down and laughed at when I told them "Well, that doesn't sound very personal, simple or brilliant to me." when speaking of their management culture.
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Fun game to play at "all-hands" meetings: https://www.businessbuzzwordbingo.com/
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This shit makes me want to start a cult in the woods so I can live completely isolated from corporate culture bullshit
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Ok but hear me out.
We acquired 20 new logos this month!
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"Net new logos" was an actual term used in the company I previously worked for.
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I worked with a government IT department that focused on renaming itself at least 7 times.in 2 years, with new mission, vision, logo, etc. each name was something like "end users experience department" or some shit liek that.
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what are “new verticals”? do i even want to know?
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They are opportunities for increasing shareholder value through innovative and disruptive market-leading practices.
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🤢🤮
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I mean not necessarily, they could just be ways to expand profit centers by increasing pipeline opportunities through net new MQLs
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Depending on the context of the business, it could also mean exploring new product categories, like a bicycle maker deciding to get into the skateboard market because it happens to be popular. Or in the context of an online news website, a "vertical" is whether you are writing about tech, or health, or pop culture, etc...
When I wrote for MUO (very briefly) I was assigned to the creative software "vertical"; writing articles about video editing software, updates to different paint/art programs, etc...
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Verticals are industries. I.e, "services" or "wholesale" are verticals.
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Description, GIF of a giant pile of tires on fire in a field with lots of black smoke.
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Response: Sensible chuckle at said giant pile of tires.
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The best thing I ever did was get out of a job/career in an industry that bought into that cult nonspeak. Anytime i hear that stuff anymore, I think of this Weird Al song.
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Check out Wierd Al's Mission Statement for a primer
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George Carlin also has a bit of just corporate jargon stapled together to make a short little speech.
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Sweet
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Grit. I worked at a massive tech company that found this one and it was fucking everywhere. I don't mind the basic concept of it, but it was just in every conversation for like 2+ years.
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Everything was a "Game changer" about 5 years ago. But at least you have Slack. We have fucking Teams.
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Permanently Deleted
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Alternative title how you know you need to find another place to work
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What’s the worst one on the list and why?
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KPI because I'm tired of having a good thing going, an exec strolls in and decides they don't have time to learn about what we're doing, KPIs get spun up, and then we shift from getting things done well to getting things done in a way that games the KPIs so we don't get fired by said exec whose entire job is to glance over a chart once a month as if that gives him real insight into the team
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"Touch base" in my opinion. It's the weakest, most common justification for meetings that serve little purpose.
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For me, it's not even on the list
"Reach out"
Yous were convinced by a billionaire to use that instead of "contact" or "get in touch" so he could sell more stuff, and also it sounds conceited as fuck; like you're doing someone a favour by contacting them 🤢
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9gag because It's not even an iFunny watermark.
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Salesforce
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The difference between people who just talk and the people who do.
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"challenges and opportunities"
"go-dos"
"non-negotiable"
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"Actionable insights" is the opposite of these corpo buzzwords.
It's a phrase I use to shut down clients when they ask for something that doesn't have value. Also know as interesting but not actionable. I prioritize my time on finding actionable insights. Data that can drive decisions.
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Honorable mentions: “source of truth” and “sanity check”.
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Since this is giving me Don Beveridge vibes (R.I.P), I remember when RedLetterMedia's Best of the Worst Black Spine edition had his customization seminar on their first episode.
They were laughing and thinking he was some kind of lunatic conman for all of the supposedly nonsense things he was spouting about pushing whopper buttons and deficiencies of PK and a bunch of other stuff, and I'm just sitting back thinking "nope...I understand every word he's saying." Because not only do I have to live currently in an environment where my upper managers emails are filled with such nonsense, but my first job was AT Burger King when I was 16 in 1992 and guess what...
THEY HAD A LITERAL WHOPPER BUTTON!
It was used by management to tell the staff when to keep more burgers in the warming tray and when to lower the supply based on customer traffic. They implemented it because..."75% of the time the Whopper was being served cold"
"Push the Whopper Button" is shorthand for being efficient with when and where you're spending your resources so that your not wasting them where you don't have to and not having them available when you do.
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Whenever I see companies use ERP as an acronym, I can't help but wonder if they're aware of its more general meaning
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The one I hate most: "Art of the Possible".
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"Deficiency of PK"
HIT THE WHOPPER BUTTON!
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Weaponized language
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I confess that I’m 25 years into my career field and I still don’t “get” “OKR” and “PKI”.
I know what the acronyms mean and have looked at definitions dozens of times. But, when I see them in practice, I figure that there’s something I’m still missing—some arcane knowledge only revealed to project managers and executives—because they’re always somehow nonsensical to the business, like someone filled in a Mad Lib.
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OKay, Right?
Means having a chill attitude, especially when you screw up badly right in front of your supervisor.
Public Key Infrastructure
Means your offices are locked not by company private keys but by public statutes of the state, and a court order will make them unlock.
(Or, less-commonly used)
PacK it In
Give up. Go home.
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Customer success management
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To be fair, Game Changer was a great strain. Very creative, me an a bud enjoyed some an launched into DND world building for an hour an a half
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Where's unlock?
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You forgot "Digital Transformation"
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Get into the damn think tank!
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I'm a particular fan of "power networking"
