The Picard Maneuver
apfelwoiSchoppenThe best thing I ever did was get out of a job/career in an industry that bought into that cult nonspeak. Anytime i hear that stuff anymore, I think of this Weird Al song.
"Weird Al" Yankovic - Mission Statement (Official 4K Video)
"Weird Al" Yankovic's new album "Mandatory Fun" out now on iTunes: http://smarturl.it/MandatoryFunAmazon: http://smarturl.it/MandatoryFunAMZGoogle Play: http...
floofloofI don’t understand why business people do this to themselves. I quit working for large organizations in favor of smaller companies that pay less, because at least there’s much less of this. It does get unbearable.
Lingo is a powerful social tool. Once you know to look for it, you see it everywhere.
Some lingo is always necessary for jobs to communicate complex ideas quickly. Everyone has terms and phrases used in their profession that are exclusive to it, as well as some that are exclusive to their workplace. People outside of their job don’t know the lingo, those inside do. In this way lingo is a double-edged sword: it eases communication, but creates a social barrier between those in the know and everyone else.
In an increasing number of places this isolating side effect has been used by certain groups as the motivation for them to contrive lingo. For a long time this was largely relegated to cults and other fringe groups that wanted to shore up the feeling of togetherness of the people within and keep them away from outsiders.
The big change was when groups found that by constantly changing the lingo they could induce two other effects: the exclusion of outsiders and exerting control over existing insiders. The MBA/business types are a prime example of this. For people in or seeking to be a part of the group knowing the latest buzzwords is a must, and not knowing them or using outdated ones opens them up to being ostracized. People who are “in” must constantly stay up to date, thus staying attentive to the trends of the group. At the same time people with a casual interest or interaction are actively dissuaded by how often unfamiliar words are used by members of the group.
This sort of weaponized use of lingo is much more widespread these days. Once you see it in this case you can find it in just about every flavor of modern political group and online forum. If you find a group that seems to always be changing its buzzwords, buyer beware.
You are “on point”. 😁
borariAre you implying that on point is an example of this type of lingo?
On point has been used in the military as a way to describe a soldier being stationed at their post or standing guard as far back as the 1880s. It was used in ballet in the early 1900s, and used in legal contexts in the 1930s.
When the “lingo” that the slang is derived from dates back to the 1880s, almost 150 years ago, I think it ceases to be lingo and just becomes language.
Yes, “on point” is slang, but only just recently. Slag is just a little further down the scale in terms of specialized language.
The real test is how accepted a word or phrase is with the larger population using a given language (while keeping a specific meaning in mind). This gets a little muddied with the lingo used by larger groups.
For instance the phrases “weird” and “cat lady” have both been co-opted by the major political parties in this election to decide their opponents. Because they each have so many members and because their discourse is covered by media outlets the new connotations of those phrases will be more widely known outside of the group and will stop being lingo much faster than the phrases you use privately with your family or coworkers.
“On point” used to be lingo in the military once upon a time, but because of the size of the military (and aided by the internet) it has become slang and is no longer a phrase only used by a certain group.
And there’s the rub. Lingo isn’t inherently evil, in fact it’s necessary to get through day-to-day life. You can’t refer to every tool you use on the job with a short sentence explaining what it is, you say it’s name and the people you work with know what you’re talking about. The only time lingo must be avoided is when talking about something you’re familiar with with someone who isn’t to avoid putting them off or confusing them.
The real danger is people not realizing how (contrived, constantly changing) lingo can be used to manipulate them, specifically how it drives tribalism and the “us versus them” mentality. This is especially important given how political movements and other groups behave online, and how prevalent this tactic has become over the past decade.
I couldn’t understand what you were saying, you didn’t use nearly enough lingo, so I translated it.
“Ah, the almighty power of lingo—like the Swiss Army knife of social circles. Once you’re hip to the jargon game, it’s like spotting Easter eggs in every convo. At work, lingo’s the secret sauce for pushing complex ideas through the pipeline fast. But hey, here’s the kicker: it’s like having a VIP pass—you’re either in the club or left standing outside.
Now, here’s where it gets spicy. Some folks take that lingo and flip the script—they don’t just use it, they manufacture it like a startup cranking out MVPs. Back in the day, this was mostly culty vibes, fringe-y circles looking to get the ‘us vs. them’ mojo going. But then boom—the suits came in, turned it into a science, and voilà, welcome to Corporate Speak 2.0.
MBA-types are the real MVPs here. Knowing the latest buzzwords is like holding the golden ticket. If you’re still rocking last quarter’s vocab, well, tough luck—you’re getting a one-way ticket to Outsider-ville. Gotta keep your buzzword game on point, always watching the trends, or else risk going full ‘legacy system.’ Meanwhile, casuals who just want to dip a toe in? They’re hitting the eject button as soon as they hear ‘synergize’ for the tenth time.
But hey, it’s not just the corporate world—we’ve got weaponized lingo all over the place now. Find a group that keeps updating their lingo like it’s firmware? Yeah, you might wanna run a virus scan on that one.”
I translated it to c-suite corporate-speak:
In today’s dynamic ecosystem, lingo operates as a key enabler of efficient communication across verticals. Once you develop the right mindset to identify these synergies, you’ll notice how omnipresent it is in various touchpoints.
Lingo, when optimized, is mission-critical for teams to streamline workflow and align on key deliverables. Every organization operates with its own set of core competencies, terminologies, and best practices, fostering a cohesive knowledge-sharing culture within the workspace. However, it also creates silos, as stakeholders outside the org chart often lack the domain expertise to engage with internal dialogues. In this sense, lingo serves as a double-edged sword: it accelerates communication but also establishes friction between insiders and non-aligned players.
In an increasing number of verticals, this isolationist outcome has been leveraged by niche groups to create bespoke lingo ecosystems. Historically, this was siloed to fringe networks like cults and other off-the-radar clusters looking to enhance internal cohesion and optimize exclusivity. However, there’s been a paradigm shift.
Forward-thinking organizations and market leaders have identified that by pivoting lingo in an agile manner, they can drive two critical outcomes: exclusion of external stakeholders and increased influence over internal talent. The MBA/business sector serves as a leading case study. For professionals looking to future-proof their careers or increase their visibility in the value chain, adopting the latest buzzwords has become non-negotiable. Misalignment with current verbiage exposes individuals to the risk of reputational impact and diminishes their social capital. Meanwhile, staying on the pulse of emerging trends ensures stakeholders remain relevant and continue to maximize their contributions to the core business objectives. At the same time, those with only a peripheral interest are effectively filtered out through the continuous deployment of next-gen terminology.
This paradigm of weaponized lingo is becoming more prevalent across ecosystems. Once you’ve identified this framework, you’ll recognize its use case across a diverse array of political entities, digital communities, and emerging markets. If you identify a group consistently iterating on its buzzword strategy, consider that a red flag for potentially high-barrier entry. Always engage with a strategic mindset.
Thanks, I hate it
Send a bondulance, I’m having a stronk.
I hate this. Seething hatred.
The only thing I would disagree on is that lingo is a recent phenomenon. That’s just recency bias.
The Catholic Church used Latin at mass from its inception to the mid-20th century, and the oldest Greek versions of the Bible already use some words we simply have never seen anywhere else.
Philosophers have always been a notorious PITA with using existing words or close derivatives of existing words with different meanings, sometimes the lingo is specific to a single author.
And let’s not even get into judicial lingo and its very ancient and storied use of disenfranchising the less fortunate who did not speak it and could not afford a lawyer to speak it for them - that is when the court system wasn’t in Latin.
Corporate lingo takes more places in our lives as large corporations take up more and more of the economic and political landscape (with some interesting evolutions in form thanks to the influence of Globish). That’s it.
The only thing I would disagree on is that lingo is a recent phenomenon. That’s just recency bias.
Ever-changing lingo is almost certainly a modern phenomenon, as the pace and frequency of communication has changed drastically recently.
It’s difficult to get a new buzzword to float to a massive audience without mass communication. More recently, the president can invent a new buzzword (e.g. one I remember viscerally is "WMD"s which I swear I had never heard before the run-up to the Iraq war) and have social media, mass media, and individual people saying it in under a week.
You’re just getting old. Things have perhaps gotten a little faster in general, but Gen Z didn’t invent slang. Also “skibbidy rizz” is Gen Alpha more than Z. And slang very rarely is attributable to a single personality. Apparently Kai Cenat popularized “rizz”, but it had existed for a long time before and has way outgrown him. The vast majority of people who unironically say “rizz” don’t even know who he is.
The linguistic phenomenon isn’t even linked to the internet particularly. It’s just a contraction of “charisma”, hardly an unusual way for slang to emerge pre-internet and not comparable to 1337 5p34k which never made it out of terminally online subcultures.
Before the internet, radio, TV, and the press were effective tools for massively spreading slang. Boomers had no issues making “cool” cool, as well as a bunch of other slang words that unlike “cool” aren’t cool anymore.
Your generation had “WMDs” but I’m sure boomers had similar things with Vietnam, and their parents with WWII. Hell, in 1918 or so the entire world learned the phrase “Spanish flu” like we did “COVID”. The more things change the more they stay the same.
And how can we forget “OK” whose origins are mysterious but generally people agree it comes from a short lived 19th century linguistic fad that gave “Oll Korrect” (what’s for sure is that “okay” came after “OK”). Now “OK” is quite possibly the most universal word in existence. Sure back then it probably took a few years to spread within the anglosphere, but OTOH there was also much more dialectic variability in language across regions so it’s not like there was less going on, it was just more fragmented.
People have always been going crazy with language and each generation appropriates their mother tongue in their unique way. The idea that language is even remotely static or “used to be less crazy” is entirely false, yet every generation perpetuates this idea when confronted with new slang they don’t understand.
You’re just getting old.
Yeah the same is true for me and you and everyone else. But the rate of change of lingo has increased because the power that used to belong to only people with direct access to mass media now belongs to anyone who has or had a “viral” moment.
Sure back then it probably took a few years to spread within the anglosphere, but OTOH there was also much more dialectic variability in language across regions so it’s not like there was less going on, it was just more fragmented.
That’s exactly the point. Of course language isn’t static, but the ability for lingo to spread and become mainstream has increased with the ability to reach new audiences provided by new forms of mass media (termed as social media).
‘If we take a step back we can truly appreciate the granularity of sentiment in this curated list of words’ - someone from HR
I once got an email from an executive C-level who mentioned adding value at least four times in a single paragraph.
Annoying as hell because the email hardly contained anything of substance.
That would be every e-mail from C-level.
grrgyleThat’s the special executive duckspeak.
I’ve gone from being righteously angry to bored and hopeless hearing the speech of some particularly skilled practitioners.
It’s really kind of amazing how this kind of babble can have such an intense emotional impact while textually imparting almost 0 new information.
It’s all about the vibes conveyed by the medium. Kind of like how trump talks in a way, come to think of it.
jballsI had a business professor who used “value add” constantly, to the point that I still can’t hear that 20 years later without cringing. Our final project in his class was something like “look at a business and find a place where you can value add.” That was literally all the guidance we got.
Everything was a “Game changer” about 5 years ago. But at least you have Slack. We have fucking Teams.
potoooooooo ✅️Cross-Pollination. Breaking Down Silos.
Cross-Pollination
My team lead likes to talk about “fertilizing each other”.
I would have so much fun with that, I’d fear HR would get involved.
“Hey don’t mind me I’m just here to fertilize you”
ಠ_ಠ
Elon?
Cross-functional is the variant I see more often
Whenever I see companies use ERP as an acronym, I can’t help but wonder if they’re aware of its more general meaning
My search skills are failing me and I’m only coming up with results for Enterprise Resource Planning. What is the more general meaning?
ERP can also refer to Erotic Role Play
Ah, right. Thanks for that I would never have made that connection. I only mention role play in an implied erotic context at this point in my life, so seeing the E there just caused my brain to short circuit I guess.
stochastictrebuchetJust a few more years until we’ve fully migrated to SAP’s WiFu system
NegativeNullFun game to play at “all-hands” meetings: www.businessbuzzwordbingo.com
What’s the worst one on the list and why?
“Touch base” in my opinion. It’s the weakest, most common justification for meetings that serve little purpose.
For me, it’s not even on the list
“Reach out”
Yous were convinced by a billionaire to use that instead of “contact” so he could sell more stuff, and also it sounds conceited as fuck; like you’re doing someone a favour by contacting them 🤢
KPI because I’m tired of having a good thing going, an exec strolls in and decides they don’t have time to learn about what we’re doing, KPIs get spun up, and then we shift from getting things done well to getting things done in a way that games the KPIs so we don’t get fired by said exec whose entire job is to glance over a chart once a month as if that gives him real insight into the team
Hupf9gag because It’s not even an iFunny watermark.
Salesforce
Noble ShiftWe’ll circle back to this next week.
With actionable deliverables
To move the needle
Description, GIF of a giant pile of tires on fire in a field with lots of black smoke.
zarkanianResponse: Sensible chuckle at said giant pile of tires.
Makes me wanna logout life
Self-uninstall
Unsafely eject drive
IbaudiaThis shit makes me want to start a cult in the woods so I can live completely isolated from corporate culture bullshit
I’m in full swing of a job search and I painfully relate to this image
No way, this is a great reference chart. All the actionables have been curated into one place.
THCDentonGrit. I worked at a massive tech company that found this one and it was fucking everywhere. I don’t mind the basic concept of it, but it was just in every conversation for like 2+ years.
I cannot tell you how many bosses Ive had/ heard say they are going to have a moment of “radical kindness” and then proceed to just RIP into their employees until they cry.
Corporate double speak is wack.
This sounds quite specific for something you had to experience multiple times. Hope the people are ok and you found something better to work for.
idk, I know that there are great companies to work for- my sister found a unicorn of a job. Great pay (and hourly), tons of vacation, work from home, a decent amount of travel but not too much (she’s in sales for a scientific instrument company), but I have job hopped enough to know that what she has is now becoming the exception. And of course to your point, this is all anecdotal. I’m now self employed and I’ve never been busier nor happier.
I’m picking up a scent of conservative-flavored grindset thinking, where since adversity and pain build character and resilience, I’m pretty much the best person I can be by being a complete piece of shit to those around me.