Maybe you and I have a lot in common in the workplace, you spend a lot of time sitting in meetings listening to people try to assert their position, explain their existence to others and waffle nonsense about “Blue Sky thinking”, “Parking lots” and other corporate middleman jargon to confuse everyone else while sounding like they have an actual plan. This little post should help remove the clouds from the words and help explain the real meaning behind these comments.
Navigating “corporate speak” isn’t easy.
Here’s a helpful guide:
The Status of the Business:
- “Challenging landscape” = It’s tough out there. We’re going out of business, quickly
- “Digital transformation” = We’re going out of business, slowly
- “Headwinds” = Missed earnings
- “Tailwinds” = Made earnings
- “We are in it for the long haul” = We are so underwater
- “If in doubt Zoom out” = look at what we have accomplished
- “The Brand” = We still rely on our branding to do the work
Used in meetings:
- “Close the loop” = Let’s say the final thing on this and move on. Forever
- “Bridge the gap” = Theres confusion between what you are saying and what I know to be true, lets get in sync
- “Boil the ocean” = Let’s not fry all of our leads in this one attempt
- “My hands are tied” = I can do it but I’m going to have an uncomfortable conversation and I’d rather not.
- “Push it to Q5” = It’s out there way in the distance.
- “Let me check with my team” = No
- “Possibly” = No
- “On my roadmap” = Not happening
- “What’s your angle on this?” = What are you trying to do you sneaky bastard
Just a few deep and I already feel like I’m on the set of The Office TV Series.
- “Let’s not drop the ball on x” = Dont you guys mess up this deal/project/business
- “Feedback will be anonymous” = We know everyone’s input and are monitoring all your answers. This will impact your evaluations.
- “Give it your 110%” = Please work extra hard on this we need the win
- “This will be done in Q4” = This will be done in Q2 next year
- “I’ll challenge that” = My ideas and voice are more important
- “Disagree and commit” = I hate you
- “Per my last email” = Try reading, for once in your life
- Add it to the parking lot = That’s a good point but let’s focus on what’s at hand now
- “Let’s circle back” = We’ll never speak of this again
- “Take it offline” = We’ll never speak of this again
- “Touch base” = You said something you shouldn’t of in that meeting and I want to talk to you 1 to 1
- “1,000ft View” = This is a very very high level account of what we are doing
- “30,000 foot view” = I don’t know what I’m saying
- “Low hanging fruit” = Easy promotion
- “Open up the kimono” = HR violation
- “Let’s put a pin in that” = You made a good point Ill need to do some research and come back on this.
- “All hands on deck” = I am higher up the food chain, and I want everyone taking this seriously Let’s actually try for once, please
- “Stay Tuned” = I don’t have it all worked out and I’m saying this to buy more time.
The meeting room’s lingo gets highly confusing with all these ladder climbing bumbling middle men making terms up without really having the plan, the authority or the knowledge to pull some things off. This section right here is where the wildest things get said.
Regarding the company technology:
- “Building the car while driving it” – We have poor documentation and we have deadlines, we made a choice.
- “Can you customise it?” – We use outdated poorly documented legacy infrastructure
- “We use AI” = We don’t use AI
- “We use machine learning” = We don’t use machine learning
- “We use Agile methodology” = We move fast and everyone thinks its to do with a greek god
Most large organisations have the most complete utter piles of shit tech infrastructure known to the server gods. Its usually been architected by some know it all university grad who at one time lived in a web master forum but had moved on and not really stayed current on evolving tech stacks and then the cobbled-together legacy stack doesn’t connect to anything, cant be customised enough to be classified as modern and causes people working on it to outsource rather than develop and maintain.
Wow did I just rant? yep sure did. It touched a sore spot in my brain.
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