Credit: Irreference.com
To: All
From: Charlie
Subject: A somewhat random list of business terms I despise and what I think they mean
Below please find a list of business jargon that shall henceforth be terminated from our parlance. I know you have a few of your own and I would like to hear what they are. Please be advised this goes into effect immediately.
Ladder up. This means, ostensibly, that individual components of a project should complement or somehow support larger components or a master plan. What it really means is: “I want you to tie all these disparate things together in a way that somehow justifies the whole. Shoehorn them together if you have to with a lot of vague rationale. I’m counting on you to complete what was half baked or designed by committee. Failure to do so will bring humiliation and dread.”
Plus up. (Sorry, boss. I know you’re fond of this one but it must die.) This means to take a concept or proposal and make it better. In what way? I don’t know – take a stab at it and try to impress me. If it doesn’t impress me… see “ladder up,” especially the “humiliation and dread” part.
Flush it out. When you have something clogged in a passageway, like a pipe, it can be flushed out. If you have the SKELETON of an idea, it can be FLESHED out. Please don’t tell me you’re going to take a plan and flush it out – unless said plan really is stuck in an idea potty somewhere and can, with the right amount of Roto Rootering, be expelled.
Back end, front end, buckets and pieces. As in, “What’s the back end of that look like, and which piece goes into these buckets?” This basically means, “I want to rearrange the way this is organized into different groups. We have to make sure we give everything the right name. Then it’ll be up to all of you to figure out how it fits. By the way, we’ll need to spend hours and hours on every bit of minutiae related to this.”
Step away. If I hear you tell me you need to step away from something, what it basically means is that you no longer want to be responsible for it. Somehow you think “step away” is a better way of saying, “It’s not part of my job and shouldn’t be a task for which I’m responsible for so please don’t speak to me about it again.”
Push back and follow up. Push back means, “I’m going to contradict you and/or resist your orders” and follow up means “I am going to bug you about that again.”
NOTABLE EXCEPTION TO THIS RULE. If you are being facetious and using weird jargon that you made up simply for the purpose of entertaining yourself and others, then I’m for it. Blue sky that, seek synergies from the stakeholders or whatever you have to do, I’m in. If, for example, you can get a roomful of people agreeing that “to boxer shorts that item” means to “have an inner layer in place,” or “let’s cradle that infant” is “we’ll place that on hold,” you’ve taken the lead in the game.
leverage, thought leadership, let me put some ideas up against that, when we bucket that out, to your point, and, my all time favorite, at the end of the day.