“Let’s knock that project on the head today, shall we? Then we can fire it upstairs for a rubber stamp from the head honcho.” They have become a staple of everyone’s working day: those slick and sassy soundbites that have us rolling our eyes on a regular basis. But office jargon is more contagious than you think. Chances are that your own vocab is peppered with it too. Time for a reality check: we have put our ducks in a row and collected some of the most toe-curling examples for you.
Squaring the circle
Office speak is packed with enough woolly wordplay to make a working conversation that little bit more complicated than it needs to be. Which dream team can we put together to make that project fly? And more to the point: how can we nail that deadline? All the low-hanging fruit has been picked. It’s time to peel the onion and drill down into the detail. Whatever the weather, this little baby has to be put to bed pronto.
Whether the thinking is blue sky or joined up, we have to knock it out of the park this time around. And as for that meeting: will it be a full-on brainstorm or are we breaking out into scrums? Whatever you end up discussing with your colleagues, the joys of office jargon means no one will be lost for words anytime soon.
Fine-tuning that content
Office jargon not only makes things sound more complicated, but also that little bit more important and interesting. Why have a plain old meeting when you could be touching base offline and bouncing ideas off each other? And what about the website? Before the boss man gets a look at it, we need to reach out and bring the tech-heads into the loop. You know, make sure we have enough bandwidth to fine-tune that content. A no-brainer, because nothing goes over the wall until at least three people have chucked in their two cents’ worth. Why simply collaborate when you could be co-creating?
The latter sounds so much more out of the box and quality-driven. Because, at the end of the day, delivering customer delight is your core competency. And you only achieve that by giving 110 percent. Besides, hit that home run by five and you can still hook up with the gang for Friday drinks. And with the week from hell done and dusted, a cold beer has so much more added value.
Call to action
It’s easy to see how such turbo-charged lingo might bring you out in a rash, but it also serves a purpose. Apart from making everything seem more complex and impressive than it actually is, office jargon is also about generating a shared mindset and a common understanding; those big, bold statements are a call to action! Do you have a few nuggets of business babble you’re always using or that drive you up the wall, or both? Leave a comment and let us know!
