Here are four word groups that sum up the corporate mood of the day.
Whenever you find yourself trapped in an insolvency, operations, sales or marketing meeting, be sure to look out for these weasel words.
If you hear five or more of these from any group, shout Buzzword Bingo! and go home.
Insolvency
acquisition, merger, Chapter 11, circling the drain, contingency, debt recovery, down the tubes, endgame, exit interview, exit strategy, exposure, fire sale, learning opportunity, legacy firm, let go, liquidation, merger, negative growth, negative profit, optimism, outplace, release people, rightsizing, moving forward, transitioning.
Operations
actionable, activity, ballpark, built to last, critical, cycle, data dump, data mining, drilling down, decision, disambiguate, drill down, guesstimate, Just In Time, Just Too Late, metadata, meta-decision, obsolescence, Plan B, post mortem, problematic, queuing, roll out, scope creep, subject creep, value chain.
Sales and Marketing (each other’s natural enemy)
administrivia, bio break, brandalism, cannibalise, channibalise, client-centric, customer, cutting edge, high-impact, high-yield, hot-desking, incentivise, infotainment, edutainment, entertraining, leading edge, long-term, low-risk, mindshare, mind full, preferred, pseudo, street cred, the market, user-centric, value-added, world first, Best Practice, global, cosmic.
Weasel Words (these can occur in any meeting)
behaviours, CEO-speak, cliché, cold-call, demystification, diplospeak, double-talk, eclectic, ellipsia (that is, the tendency to overuse: ‘…’), embedment, flagpole, hybrid, impactful, jargon, journalese, meanderthal, motherhood, atherhood, parenthood, tribal, non-concur, obfuscate, prebuttal, premumble, psychobabble, reverbiagise, trial balloon.
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