Have you ever found yourself thinking, "why is my boss speaking in riddles?"
When I first heard the phrase "boil the ocean," I remember sitting in a conference room at a meeting. I sat there clueless, trying to piece together what the hell my new boss meant by this expression. No sooner did I jot this expression down when I was hit with “we need to get some boots on the ground and synergize around this initiative." All I kept thinking was, “what is happening here… am I having some kind of out-of-body experience?!" I immediately felt like I didn’t belong. Therein lies the problem.
Let’s face it, business lingo is a big part of the workplace. It can bind us together and give us a general framework for how we communicate with one another. Yet, what I have noticed in recent years is how the excess usage of corporate double-speak is actually confusing people and serving to disenfranchise those workers who don’t feel “in the know.” People who don’t understand the new lingo can feel like an outsider and uninformed.
Much of this jargon is just plain annoying and useless. The ability to speak clearly and say what you mean in the workplace has decreased substantially over the years.
In his book, "Who Touched Base in My Thought Shower," Steven Poole talks about the problems of subjecting workers to the horrors of jargon. He feels that there is nothing more frustrating than obscuring meaning and/or intent through meaningless terminology, which actually serves to mask competence and obscure what is actually going on.
We have gone a bit too far with the flurry of buzzwords which only contribute to information overload and contrived communication we already deal with. People are trying to speak in a way that gets people’s attention because there is so much going on in the business world and so much of it begins to blend together. People are trying so hard to get noticed and to differentiate themselves. Ironically, if more people chose to talk about things in a normal way… the way you would talk to anyone else… we would all be able to communicate better.
So I have prepared this handy guide as an attempt to decode my list of all-time annoying office phrases and buzzwords. You will thank me later. ☺
When my boss says: "I need you to take it to the next level"
I'm thinking: Does anyone really know what the next level looks like and how will anyone know when I am there?!
When my boss says: "Do you have the bandwidth for this?"
I’m thinking: No, I don’t have any free time, I am swamped. Please leave me alone.
When my boss says: "You need to give 110%"
I’m thinking: It’s impossible. I can’t give more than 100% unless I can split myself in two, in which case I truly have a very rare talent and can probably retire tomorrow.
When the boss says: "We need some blue sky thinking on this. Let’s be sure to think outside the box"
I’m thinking: Forget the sky and forget the box… how about we just think?!
When the boss says: "We need to change the optics on this"
I’m thinking: I feel like I’m participating in some type of scandalous cover-up.
When the boss says: "Let’s touch base offline"
I’m thinking: I am potentially in hot water and may be taken to the principal’s office later.
When the boss says: "I have a hard stop” at 3:30 for this meeting"
I’m thinking: Ok, I get it…you need us all to know that you are the busiest person in the office.
And, one of my all-time favorite pearls of wisdom:
When the boss says: “It is what it is"
I’m thinking: Thanks for that brilliant insight.
With such diverse workforces today, it is important, more than ever, to communicate clearly and without all the nonsense that so much of today’s office jargon encompasses.
How about we get back to simply saying what we mean and check the confusing and pretentious lingo at the door.
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