Discussion on:

Most despised corporate buzzwords

Absolutely moronic. The proper term is WAN which actually stands for something.

Went to a seminar years ago and the speaker used this every other sentence, now when I hear it I cringe as it is just a sentence filler.

The one I hate the most is not a 'buzzword', but a 'buzzphrase'. I swear I hear "At the end of the day" at least 20-times a day... and always by some manager during meetings. By the end of the day, I am ready to throw someone out of the window.

"At the end of the day" - I just want to puke if I hear that statement one more time. You cannot be in a meeting where someone doesn't use "At the end of the day".

Sure, marketing buzzwords are annoying. But, I think the real harm is in technology buzzwords that convolute real attempts at communicating complex subjects. My top two are probably the most popular buzzwords these days:

Cloud
Web 2.0 (I mean really? People take this seriously?)

These two words are consistently misunderstood and misused, resulting in a complete lack of proper expectation setting in IT projects. It's not the words themselves, but that they migrated from a vague description of a complex subject area, into THE definition of that subject area.

And about any use of a noun as a verb where there was already a verb that was doing the job just fine.

I really hate to hear "utilize" when "use" fits 99% of the time.

Leverage: To screw a person or group

Artifact: A vague IT deliverable

Thank you for that. I have saved it along with this one, which I am sure will amuse or annoy you:

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/06/14/the-banned-list-top-100/

In our part of the world: Transformation. Transformation has put more productive people out of work than any depression, but has put more actionless brainless people in the management chair than any other act on earth. "Transformation" in essence means in this case, the abortion of anything that works.

I would love to see a list of 'instead of this, use this' so we can all move on from some of these!!

How about "reaching out"? It sounds a bit evangelical and rather creepy! If someone leaves me a message to say that they "just wanted to reach out to me," I immediately hit the delete button.

- "THE CLOUD"

Look people, if we focus on the Low-hanging fruit and get our business aligned with the Best of breed products, we can build a real Synergy between the business and our customers. To do this, we are going to have to be Proactive and have a "value-add" based messaging that is catchy like most company's Elevator pitch, so I'm going to need the the Next steps to develop the High level messaging. Plus, I know it is the holiday season and everybody here has a low Bandwidth and if someone at this table has possibly put a list of Actionable items together maybe after they share them with everybody they can Circle back after the meeting and discuss, then Loop me in to the Learnings today. Remember people, this is a Mission-critical task in developing the message, so please, if any items are forgotten or missed please Bring them to the table. I hope I don't have to Incentivize people with that ugly words "getter-done!"

See, I can speak Management!

Outside the box (31% of the recipients are unable to think this way)
Low-hanging fruit (24% of the recipients apparently are)

'The Cloud' - Translates to actually we don't have a clue where our files are located

The problem is not with the original meanings of the phrases. Example, back in the day "mission critical" really meant your troops were going to die if you didn't get them the needed supplies in a timely fashion.

The problem is over-use and mis-use, which has obliterated the original meanings and made the phrases trite..

My choice:
ROI
TCO
Leverage

PING - After the meeting I'll ping ya, and to make n=matters worse I'm not sure they even know my host name or IP

Over the last 30 years, I have put a great deal of effort into expanding my vocabulary. The purpose of communication is to transfer an idea or concept. While I understand the "buzzword" angst, I tend to ignore all fadish dialect. Synergy is a concise, effective way to say that the combined effort of several people is greater than the sum of individual efforts. If people don't understand a word and either misuse it (buzzword dialect) or misunderstand it, they have responsibility to understand the language. When I write code, I have a responsibility to accurately use the various commands, understanding the nuance of each. Even more so with the tremendously rich human language(s) we have. The problem with "buzzwords" is that their use can miscommunicate, but in order to avoid them, one would have to care about them. Is this a buzzword: sigh

1. Moving forward
2. On the same page (or, "on the same sheet of music")
2. Deep-dive
3. Best practices
4. show-stopper
5. Dog-and-pony-show
6. Ten cent tour
7. View from 10,000 feet (or "mile-high view")

Applied to people, I just hate it. It's like being compare to a car...

how bout just a 'Yes'.

horrific
that being said
24-7
no question about it

How about "the new normal"?

The one that makes me cringe is "Where are we with (my task)". Usually the person who is asking has at least two of the three following qualities:

A: Not my supervisor
B: Does not actually know what it is I am supposed to be doing
C: Is raising the question to add their 'contribution' to a meeting.

One thing which galls me is people using "theoretically" when they mean "hypothetically".

Theoretically means "according to theory"; in turn, a theory is a logical construct used to make accurate predictions. If you're assuming something will happen which has little to no precedent, or doesn't have rules to follow, that's "hypothetically".

"Theoretically, this product will make us millions." Nope, sorry; that's wishful thinking... and one of the scariest things you want to hear when developing a new application.

Personally, I'd like for people to stop "reaching out" to me. A simple phone call or email will do...

"Drink the Koolaid"

This one is particularly curious in it's usage because as far as I know it is a reference to when Jim Jones served poisonous kool aid to his cult members. Why anyone would use that phrase is beyond me.

"The next level" is one I'd rather not hear again.

Where's "let's run it up the flag pole"?

I also like "let's walk this dog round the park and see where it poops".

Not sure if this one is British-only. Anytime a person says what they do, they say they are "passionate" about it. Not just "interested", not just "doing it because I can and people pay me". No - PASSIONATE!

Some of my unfavorites...

- Going forward
- At the end of the day
- It is what it is

It should be "bandwidth" not "bandwith".

But using "bandwith" for "bandwidth" is perhaps a better way of showing little/no actual understanding of the underlying concept.

Maybe this is a new term for something else and I'm again, not on the "same page".

Road Map. Action plan.

Unfortunately I've been known to overuse these (and the above) terms and now see my folly. I feel so dirty.


I think this is a great topic, would also like to see what terms should replace some of these catch phrases. I'm a marketing type. Using clichs helps shorten copy so I find them useful.

"Please help me understand" after you just told them the problem.
or "that's the cat's meow" every time someones says this, I think, How did cat's come into this conversation?

I think my boss gets his buzzwords from sportscenter, if he yells "Yahtzee" the next time something succeeds I think I might quit.

"Having said that" or "That being said"....Over used!

Back in my days as a wingnut (Air Force officer) one of my bosses was infamous for project briefings where he would divvy out "Opportunity to Excel" projects that were either nearly impossible or incredibly short-suspense (or both). Through experience - the assignments were frequent - we learned to grade the difficulty of the assignment by another phrase...if it was particularly challenging AND due "yesterday" he would establish eye-contact, smile and say, "...piece of cake...".

Sorry Toni, but I think the statement "anyone with half a brain and/or an ounce of self-respect would continue to use these terms" is a little harsh!

A few of these bother me also (synergy, incentivize). But "high-level", "mission critical", "proactive", "bandwidth"? These are part of everyday business speak at my company and are meaningful to us.

Personally, I am more annoyed with the tech buzzwords like "The Cloud" and "Net 2.0", etc. Those are misused so much that they aren't always very helpful.

Now I'm going to spend the rest of the day trying to figure out what to say in place of these terms

BEFORE: "Here are the high-level requirements"
AFTER(1): "Here are the general requirements" ??
AFTER(2): "Here are the 30,000ft requirements" ??
AFTER(3): "Here are the requirements if you were to look down from Mt. Everest..."

You forgot "going forward". Ugh!!!

Did we miss "at the end of the day" and operationalize? Reading this thread through has (almost) the same numbing effect as a three hour meeting.

"Skin in the game..." (Just has a creepy ring to it)
and,
"At the end of the day..."

Which means to extend, as in an extensible toungue, but often used to mean that the life cycle of the solution or product can be upgraded to any size business or enterprise.

As in "...Our product is extensible, so you will never have to replace it. It grows to meet your every need.

This one never quite made it, but it was in a corporate memo many mainframes ago. how about "constantly rigid flexibility"??????