Look out jargon-lovers, the Beeb's playing bullsh*t bingo

By Alex Manchester, Editor, The Internal Comms Hub (Australia), Melcrum

Do you love to "go forward", indulge in a bit of "blue-sky thinking" or, "collect low-hanging fruit"? Then you'd better not read this article over at the BBC - 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate.

The collection of comments was inspired by a typically brilliant Lucky Kellaway column, also published yesterday. If you've read Kellaway's FT column before (or saw her at SCM UK in 2005), then it will all be familiar. I doubt you could ever get bored of it though – after all, there always seems to be new phrases to call "Bingo!" on.

My own pet hate, "cascade", gets two mentions in the Beeb's list:

39. "In my work environment it's all cascading at the moment. What they really mean is to communicate or disseminate information, usually downwards. What they don't seem to appreciate is that it sounds like we're being wee'd on. Which we usually are."
 LMD, London

40. "At a large media company where I once worked, the head of human resources - itself a weaselly neologism for personnel - told us that she would be cascading down new information to staff. What she meant was she was going to send them a memo. It was one of the reasons I resigned - that, and the fact that the chief exec persisted on referring to the company as a really cool train set."

Angela Sinickas has said on many occasions that "cascade" as an internal communication metaphor or process is completely flawed anyway, as information doesn't cascade down through managers nice and evenly, in sequence, throughout an organization, like some hideous DIY waterfall feature in a garden pond:

"My experience and client survey results show that cascading as a way of broadcasting new information is not effective.

In fact, companies in my survey database who purposely use cascading as a way of broadcasting new information are the ones with the largest percentage of employees hearing things on the grapevine. This is because as soon as the first VP/director conducts the first meeting, those people leave their meeting and talk to all their friends whose managers have not yet had a meeting.

My experience shows that employees at all levels have higher information levels on key company topics in organizations where they rely on mass communications to provide consistent and timely information to all employees, FOLLOWED by face-to-face meetings to discuss the context of the company information for each work group and how it might affect them.

I would recommend using e-mail newsletters to those with online access and posting PDFs of the same information on as many bulletin boards as possible to reach employees without online access."

"Cascading" is bunkum, as are most of the other terms on the list.

So, with all that in mind, what's your favourite - or least favourite - piece of "office-speak"?

Comments

[Mandy]

Mine is already on the list Alex – "going forward". And to my shame I've actually used it myself. That's the annoying thing with jargon, once it has infiltrated your vocabulary and become the way you articulate something, you forget how you ever said it before. Best to remain vigilant against picked it up in the first place!

[Victoria Mellor]

Don't get me started. Favourites on my list right now are:

1. the "piece" as in "the human resources piece" or the "communications piece"
2. Making everything into a verb. "to mind map" "to blue sky" something, etc. Yuk.

Maybe there's a Melcrum research project in tracking how these habits spread among the management consultant population and identify who the "early adopters" of jargon really are.

[Josh]

Errrrggghhh - 'going forward' takes the cake.

Unlike other jargon words - which are annoying chiefly b/c of the failed and unecessary desire to sound sophisticated - 'going forward' wins the prize for also being entirely irrelevant, because when it's used you're already speaking in the future tense.

[Alex Manchester]

@ Josh, you're right, most jargon phrases are either poorly conceived metaphors or simply misconstrued (or butchered) interpretations of language. The misuse of "impact" and "impacted" is another of my pet hates, but that's a decades-old dispute.

@ Victoria, the "Piece" has been on your list for a while. Sad to see it's still in use!

@ Mandy, true and in all honesty I've been guilty of it too. As you say - remain vigilant!

[Sona Hathi]

I blogged on this last month after I'd been to Melcrum's advanced writing and editing skills course, where I asked the group members what their most hated jargon terms were. "Mission statement", "leveraging" and "synergies" came up quite often.

But in response to our trainer's advice of keeping writing simple and cutting out all jargon, many of them felt that they were expected to use language like this in business messages from senior leaders and the exec board, and that simplifying the writing would seem patronising, unprofessional and informal within the corporate environment.

[Alex Manchester]

It's certainly a perennial topic, Sona, with the old faves dying slow and new gems cropping up.

You can find Sona's post here:
Mission Statement = mission impossible?

And more info on the Jargon story and the writing course here:
Going forward let's incentivize people to stop the jargon!