If you’ve spent any time messaging your 25 year-old niece or nephew then you’ll be familiar with the confusion of working out the right platform to text them on, followed swiftly by the secret shame of being baffled by strange new words. How do you find out what ‘slay’ means without admitting you thought it had something to do with dragons? Life inside an organisation can feel exactly like that with its perpetual floating cloud of jargon and acronyms. These fake and funky words hang around like a fog obscuring your view of reality, messing with your mind and creating perfect conditions for misinformation and confusion.
There are generally four types of corporate jargon:
- Real words used in opaque ways – ‘circle back’, ‘lean in’, ‘low-hanging fruit’, ‘bandwidth’, loop in’, ‘hard stop’, ’deep dive’, ‘take off line’
- Once lovely words that have been thrashed to death – ‘synergy’, ‘leverage’, ‘collaborate’
- Made up words that have pushed aside perfectly good real words – for the record ‘learnings’ isn’t a word, although lessons and insights are.
- Acronyms – the worst offenders as they erase any clue of the original meaning unless you’re on the in-group memo.
My motto has always been one of avoidance of all the above but sometimes playing the buzzword bingo game makes you look more of a team player. You’ll need to pay attention because these words are also subject to fads and using an out-of-date jargon term, even in the corporate world, can seriously erode your relevance.
Here’s my guide to some of the current prolific perpetrators.
How to decode some common jargon phrases
Best practice
Best practice feels like one of those passive aggressive put downs you lob at a colleague you don’t really rate. Here’s a way of deciphering what’s really meant depending on how the phrase is used:
| They say | They mean |
| “This approach is a best practice” | Stand down. I don’t want to hear any criticism about this recommendation because it’s rock solid and it will be impossible for you to improve it. |
| “We’re aiming for best practice” | We’re a bit rubbish at the moment but aiming to be less rubbish any day soon. |
| “What’s best practice in this area?” | That’s a really bad idea – got any better? |
| “Who’s doing best practice in this area?” | I seriously have to work with an idiot like you on this project? |
Best practice is a genuine and worthwhile ambition that can provide a useful benchmark or measurable goal. There are institutes and associations dedicated to helping you to improve your likelihood of attaining best practice and tools that will measure, set milestones and celebrate your victory when you do. However, try to avoid using the term like a weapon.
Backlog
This is part of the language of Agile, a work methodology that gained traction in the tech world and, depending on your perspective, has spread like a virus, or love on Valentine’s Day from there. In Agile speak, a backlog is a prioritised list of tasks that a team needs to complete; it’s dynamic and can change as new information becomes available. But anyone who has worked in an Agile setting also knows it can quickly become a first line of defence to squash resistance. Generally speaking if this phrase is used in your presence then it might not be friendly fire.
| They say | They mean |
| Let me see if you’re on the backlog | You are not a priority right now. |
| Nope, it’s still on the backlog | You are never going to be a priority. |
| Let me see if I can take you off the backlog | If you allocate another gazillion dollars to this project, we’ll make this a priority. |
Collaborate
Yet another example of an overused word that has become threadbare from overuse.
| They say | They mean |
| We should collaborate on this | Can you please do all the work on this project. |
| I’m not seeing great collaboration here | I have some concerns about your performance. |
| We need better collaboration on this project | The wheels are falling off this project and it’s absolutely not my fault |
| We collaborated really well | I’m definitely going to get you to do all the work on the next project as well. |
Take offline
| They say | They mean |
| I think we can take this offline | Let’s chat about this later, we probably don’t have time to get into this issue right now. |
| Let’s you and me take this off-line, (name) | I can’t believe you’ve raised this issue again in a public forum. I told you the last time it’s not up for debate. |
| We can deal with that off-line | That’s such a dumb idea. Stop talking immediately. |
Top Tip
By using words and phrases with imprecise or flexible definitions, at best you’ll look try-hard and more seriously you could slow down a project because your colleagues aren’t clear on the task at hand.
Don’t get sucked into the cultural pressure to use buzzwords, jargon and acronyms in place of simple, clear language. That way you can ensure everyone in a meeting understands what is being discussed, can contribute and knows what they’re supposed to be doing.
Leave being cool and vague for your social media posts: So, besties, good luck keeping up—you’re gonna need it IRL. But don’t stress, you’ll crush it! It’s going to be lit and you’ll be a CEO in no time.