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Momorandum Archive »
Executive Momorandum
Say, What?
6/18/2009
- Say, What? (2009 Edition)
Every industry has its alphabet soup of acronyms and
linguistic idiosyncracies. But if the you've ever felt like the jargon of
work has jumped the vernacular shark, you might be ready to do a little buzzword BuzzWhacking. To what has become a favorite annual tradition, we now
submit this 2009 edition, inspired by the editors of and contributors to
www.buzzwhack.com, a site devoted to
demystifying bad business buzzwords. If you can put a string of these
together with a straight face, the humor may be a little lost on you...
Our favorite Bad Buzzwords of the Year (likely proliferating in a cubicle near
you) and their definitions, borrowed with appreciation...
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 Relanguage:
Term used by $300-an-hour consultants when $5 words, such as reword,
rephrase or rewrite, would work just as well, i.e. "I think we can
relanguage that to be more effective."
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Disambiguate:
To remove ambiguities. To make clear. (Ironic, yes)? Apparently
used extensively by software developers, as in: "Before we go gold, we need
to disambiguate the help menu verbiage."
-
Centergistic:
Focusing on one main goal or purpose. "We need to keep this meeting
centergistic if we're going to make our deadline."
-
Telephonically communicated:
To convey information or data by telephone. "The
results of the retest were telephonically communicated to the CEO."
A less buzzy alternative: "I called Jack."
-
Leveraging
knowledge capital: Stealing someone else's work or idea
(program code, presentation, etc.) and then changing a few things to make it
your own.
-
Prepone: To move
forward in time. The opposite of postpone. "The Wednesday meeting has been
preponed to Tuesday."
-
Budgetunity:
An "opportunity" for innovative budgeting, such as: "The shortfall in
revenue has given the governor a budgetunity." (So that's how all our
economic trouble started).
-
Climate sensing:
A random survey of workforce attitudes. Generally done by walking around and
chatting with the employees. Also known as "taking the pulse."
-
Conversate:
To have a conversation. Created by those who (for some bizarre reason) don't
think "converse" or "talk" are adequate.
And a few that were created with the clear intent of being uttered
tongue-in-cheek...
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BFO: Blinding Flash of the
Obvious. "Jack is having another one of his BFO
moments."
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Blamestorming:
A group process where participants analyze a failed project and look for
scapegoats other than themselves.
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Innovicide: (Loving
this one) To kill a new idea. "Jack's
concept was brilliant, but management committed
innovicide again."
-
PowerPoint
Singalong: A presentation read verbatim from the slides, without
extemporaneous observations, notes, comments or asides of any kinds.
Monotone delivery optional.
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Reverse Telecommuting: The act of bringing
things to work that you should do at home, i.e. calling friends on the
phone, selling your stuff on eBay etc.
-
Blahger:
A blogger whose message primarily consists of
blah-blah-blah. (You'll tell us if that's how we ever start to sound,
right)?
Have
a comment on or favorite of the buzzwords above? Post it and tell us
(or share your own nominations).
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