Bull sh!t bingo thread

[sheepshagger]

A place to put bull shitty words as quoted in offices (or elsewhere)

1 Going forward

Top of many people's hate list is this now-venerable way of saying "from now on" or "in future". It has the rhetorical virtue of wiping clean the slate of the past (perhaps because "mistakes were made"), and implying a kind of thrustingly strategic progress, even though none is likely to be made as long as the working day is made up of funereal meetings where people say things like "going forward".

2 Drill down

Far be it from me to suggest that managers prefer metaphors that evoke huge pieces of phallic machinery, but why else say "drill down" when you just mean "look at in detail"?

3 Action

Some people despise verbings (where a noun begins to be used as a verb) on principle, though who knows what they say instead of "texting". In his Dictionary of Weasel Words, the doyen of management-jargon mockery Don Watson defines "to action" simply as "do". This is not quite right, but "action" can probably always be replaced with a more specific verb, such as "reply" or "fulfil", even if they sound less excitingly action-y. The less said of the mouth-full-of-pebbles construction "actionables", the better.

4 End of play

The curious strain of kiddy-talk in bureaucratese perhaps stems from a hope that infantilised workers are more docile. A manager who tells you to do something "by end of play" – in other words, today – is trying to hypnotise you into thinking you are having fun. This is not a game of cricket.

5 Deliver

What you do when you've actioned something. "Delivering" (eg "results") borrows the dynamic, space-traversing connotations of a postal service — perhaps a post-apocalyptic one such as that started by Kevin Costner in The Postman. Inevitably, as with "actionables", we also have "deliverables" ("key deliverables," Don Watson notes thoughtfully, "are the most important ones"), though by this point more sensitive subordinates might be wishing instead for deliverance.

6 Issues

Calling something a "problem" is bound to scare the horses and focus responsibility on the bosses, so let's deploy the counselling-speak of "issues". The critic (and managing editor of the TLS) Robert Potts translates "there are some issues around X" as "there is a problem so big that we are scared to even talk about it directly". Though it sounds therapeutically nonjudgmental, "issues" can also be a subtly vicious way to imply personal deficiency. If you have "issues" with a certain proposal, maybe you just need to go away and work on your issues.

7 Leverage

Another verbing, as in the parodic-sounding but deathly real example reported by Robert Potts: "We need to leverage our synergies." Means nothing more than "use" or "exploit", but might be attractive because of the imported glamour from high finance, though that may now be somewhat tarnished. Give me a place to stand and I will move the world, said Archimedes. He didn't say he would leverage the deliverables matrix.

8 Stakeholders

People in the company who are affected by a certain project; also, sometimes, business partners and customers. This term, plump with cheaply bought respect, seems to have infected corporate-speak from New Labour politics, where "stakeholders" were not wooden-spike-wielding vampire hunters but people with an interest (usually financial) in some issue. Business analyst Emma Sheldrick offers some useful translations. "Manage our stakeholders," she explains, means "placate the people who are asking the intelligent questions about why something is being done"; while "Update our stakeholder matrix" really signifies "we need to take off the people who disagree with the task at hand and find some new ones who agree."

9 Competencies

Only if you have the core competencies will you be able to action the key deliverables for your relevant stakeholders going forward. Perhaps "competencies" has displaced "abilities" because of a perceived slight to people with disabilities, and "skills" because that just sounds too elitist. Whatever the reason, its usage graph on Google's Ngram Viewer shoots up from 1990, alarmingly like the graph of global temperature. There is no evading the stylistic devastation it represents.

10 Sunset

An imagistic verbing – "We're going to sunset that project" – that sounds more humane and poetic than "cancel" or "kill". When faced with the choice between calling a spade a spade and cloying euphemism, you know which the bosses will choose.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/ap ... ment-speak

Another one of my favouries is 'agnostic'

[Peg Leg]

Metrics for Numbers
Route for Plan
Revert for Reply
Growth or Expansion for "we want to increase the workload, but we are unwilling to employ people to achieve this...... you need to work more!"

Forgot about
Situation for problem!

[TheBear]

Offline, used to mean 'after this meeting'. At a meeting this morning, every agenda item was to be 'followed up offline' - i.e. stop boring everyone else in the meeting with the details of how to resolve the issue in a proactive manner going forward.

I also hate the term 'dove-tail'. Why not just work together, or collaborate if you want to be fancy about it?

[Logorrhea]

Is it the vocabulary we have a problem with, or peoples use of their vocabulary?

"Think outside the box" is an annoying one for me. I mean why don't the managers just scream "think you stupid fu*king lazy disconnected waste of a salary".

[Peg Leg]

Is it the vocabulary we have a problem with, or peoples use of their vocabulary?

"Think outside the box" is an annoying one for me. I mean why don't the managers just scream "think you stupid fu*king lazy disconnected waste of a salary".

I personally think that it's the use of terminology to skirt around a non-peripheral issue, that may possibly require action by some of the resources at the table.

on the flipside (I like that)

I do love heretofore.

[West Brit]

Does any other company use learnings instead of lessons or just mine?

As in, "what learnings can we take from that total c0ck-up we just did?"

I want to slap people in the face when they say it but it has become so insideous my hand would soon get red.

[tackle-bag]

The use of the word "pivot" in any business context.

[TheBear]

Is it the vocabulary we have a problem with, or peoples use of their vocabulary?

"Think outside the box" is an annoying one for me. I mean why don't the managers just scream "think you stupid fu*king lazy disconnected waste of a salary".

I personally think that it's the use of terminology to skirt around a non-peripheral issue, that may possibly require action by some of the resources at the table.

on the flipside (I like that)

I do love heretofore.

I hate it when people are referred to as resources. I get that it is what the R in HR stands for, but when your manager tells you that your team will have additional resources from next week, why can they not just say that there'll be new staff members?

[johng]

Does any other company use learnings instead of lessons or just mine?

As in, "what learnings can we take from that total c0ck-up we just did?"

I want to slap people in the face when they say it but it has become so insideous my hand would soon get red.

First time I have heard it. Fock you! My life was happy until now.

[Logorrhea]

But they may not actually be members of staff.

[Peg Leg]

Let's be honest though, there are a group of people who embrace this sh!t and make it a code by which to live.... positive actions and such.
Also-
I can not abide by people who touch me during business conversations!

[TheBear]

But they may not actually be members of staff.

Fair enough, but they're still people. Refer to them as such, not in the same context as computer equipment or a line on a balance sheet.

[johng]

I can not abide by people who touch me during business conversations!

Last I heard you paid them extra for that. It was the touching them that got you thrown out of the club.

[Peg Leg]

I can not abide by people who touch me during business conversations!

Last I heard you paid them extra for that. It was the touching them that got you thrown out of the club.

Value engineering!

[fourthirtythree]

Just saw this today
http://designjargonbullshit.com/

It's full of awfulness.

[Logorrhea]

But they may not actually be members of staff.

Fair enough, but they're still people. Refer to them as such, not in the same context as computer equipment or a line on a balance sheet.

I know, I'm only arguing for the fun of it.

[TheBear]

But they may not actually be members of staff.

Fair enough, but they're still people. Refer to them as such, not in the same context as computer equipment or a line on a balance sheet.

I know, I'm only arguing for the fun of it.

No, your face is only... Oh, wait.

[RoboProp]

Let's be honest though, there are a group of people who embrace this sh!t and make it a code by which to live.... positive actions and such.
Also-
I can not abide by people who touch me during business conversations!

Generally people who want be Baldwin from Glengary, Glenross

[johng]

I can not abide by people who touch me during business conversations!

Last I heard you paid them extra for that. It was the touching them that got you thrown out of the club.

Value engineering!

What has value engineering got to do with lap dancing?

[Peg Leg]

Value engineering!

What has value engineering got to do with lap dancing?

Sometimes you have to engineer your own value!