A fabulous article in today’s Independent which collects many of the most irritating office buzz words into one place. Now that these horrors have been safely corralled, will conference calls ever be the same again?
Here’s an easy to print out list of phrases to help you play buzzword bingo:
Elephant in the room
It’s not rocket science
Push the needle
Shoot the puppy
Run it up the flagpole
Swallow the frog
Touch base
Hit the ground running
Net net
Big ask
Mentoring
Get our ducks in a row
Behind the curve
Paradigm shift
Boiler room
Bottom fishing
Screw the pooch
Knife-and-fork it
Blue-sky thinking
Desk jockey
Jump the shark
Just add water
USP
Heads up
Hot desking
Solutions
‘Low hanging fruit’ and ‘outside the box’ also get an honorable mention, but the authors have not given their derivation.
Much of these are excruciating none is quite as bad as my own personal buzz word bete noir of 2007 “socialising an idea” – what’s wrong with just saying that you’re telling people so you can get their comments?
If you have any other shockers to add to the list, feel free to post them here.
