To cut a long story short, we’ve got a new line manager coming who is known as the Ginger Riddler due to his love of speaking in management bullshit. I need as many examples as possible of this type of crap so we can all amuse ourselves by firing it back at him. I don’t care what any of it means. Cheers.

Firstly, we have signed a transformational outsourcing deal with xxxx which will deliver an increase to our cost synergies from the £112m per annum in 2013, which we will still hit on time, to £143m per annum by 2015. This deal de-risks the embedded value, contractualises the delivery of the cost synergies, and it de-risks the execution of our plans, allowing us to focus on the other opportunities we have as a business.

Beat that.

I think you need to evidence some of these riddles. Bring them to life a bit.

I don’t care what any of it means

Well in that case;

‘I’ll sh1t in your slippers while watching you sleep’

Can you assess phasing the costings based on potential inflection points when choosing fungible solutions

I’m actually in a room with a Microsoft rep right now, he’s currently ‘envisioning the journey’

Ringfence his unicorn

The below is our office “bull…. bingo” list. It is very possible to get them all into 1 conversation if played well.

??? piece (context, “we’re doing a lot of work on the data migration piece”)
Best in breed
Break through the clutter
Calibrate expectations
Class leading
Close the loop
Customer centric
Disruptive innovation
Elevator pitch
Fulfilment issues
Herding cats
High order thinking
It is what it is
Just doing my job
Leverage
Low hanging fruit
Mission critical
Money maker
Par for the course
Paradigm shift
Quick and dirty
Synergy
Thought leadership
Value add
Have a V2V
Bayonet the dead
Let’s not try and boil the ocean
Sometimes you have to shoot the puppy.

Our Chief Operating Officer of the £100m a year turnover company I work for stood up the end of the last meeting I was at with him, a couple of weeks ago and said……

“Right, ya bunch o’ ****s…..Let’s do this shit!”

We sat in dazed silence, slightly dumbfounded, until he broke the spell by declaring….

“On ye go! Get tae f….”

Sorry, 8 posts in, and we’ve yet to get our ducks in a row?

“Going forward” makes my skin crawl. Not even really related to managers, most people seem to say it.
I prefer “in the future”

I have recently had the word “verbge” used to describe a block of text. Oh did the tapioca rise in my gullet.

jonnyboi – Member
I’m actually in a room with a Microsoft rep right now, he’s currently ‘envisioning the journey’

Oh shit fire, I think I’ve heard that one too.

‘Pathways’ are talked about a lot these days, I still don’t know what they mean by that.

“Let’s run it up the flag pole and see who salutes.”

“Throw it at a wall and see what sticks.”

Obviously “Ring fence the unicorn”.

#edit

“Thought shower” has been a suggestion and we do seem to be going on a lot of “journeys” of late despite racking up no mileage.

one I hear a bit :

let’s have a ‘deep dive conversation’…..

“Let me give you my elevator pitch. We don’t go after the low hanging fruit or a quick and dirty offering, we break through clutter to leverage a class leading, customer centric solution to your fulfilment issues, we will calibrate your expectations to ensure you no longer expect par for the course. We’re not trying to boil the ocean here, it is what it is, but what we do is offer a paradigm shift that is a real value add money maker, this is mission critical work and we want to offer synergy between the client piece and the best in breed offering that you have. In truth this is thought leadership that means you’re not herding cats as you bayonet the dead. Let’s not try to build the ocean here, let’s have a V2V and I can explain the high order thinking that is really me just doing my job.

“flow down”

…like sewage.

Narrative seems to be used alot these days as in ‘this the new narrative’.
‘Anyhoo’ annoys me particularly when used at work.
Systemic is overused IMO
‘From the get go’ makes me cringe – seems to be used alot by sports commentators as well

Was that an Amazon employee Iainc? We had an “operational top line reset”.

Just start making up your own.

Let’s feed this dog some beetroot.

work across the matrix

“Consultation” where i work means being told what will happen (whether we like it or not).

lunge – is that real?

The scary thing is that mine was 😯

“I hear what your saying” – I’m going to do eff all about it

Mister P – Member
Was that an Amazon employee Iainc?

nope, multinational consultancy

reorient information vectors

We have product ‘landing zones’ and ‘swim lanes’. So many TLA’s that we have a Skype chatbot to help decipher them.

digital transformation
takes this offline

Splatter the letterbox.

Perchy is full of win today.

Everything is ‘stories’ here. Presumably they’re like journeys, but you don’t need any bus money.

Sort of real, not verbatim but pretty close, I work in recruitment, we get this crap all too regularly…

Break out the emergency flags, we need to de-cream this cat.

My gaffer (not the culprit of this situation) yesterday either came up with or had heard/read ‘Can I stir fry something in your think wok?’

‘Can I stir fry something in your think wok?’

😯

Set Bombers to Own

The best bosses I’ve had were those who (co-incidentally?) talked in plain english because they understood the subject, had no need to try to impress and were confident in their abilities.

+1 for detesting ‘going forward’;

@lunge – good selection there; a few for your bullshit bingo…..thought shower, enhanced granularity (and any other type of granularity), step change (just because i don’t like it).
+1 for envisioning, deep dive and pathways.

‘Can I stir fry something in your think wok?

you owe me a new keyboard, this one now has extreme coffee ingress

Lunge wins the internet today for that masterpiece of management boll**ks.
It shows a real paradigm shift and a reset of expectations.

Some good ideas here, let’s put them all in the car park for now and we can drive them away later.

I think nowadays you need to curate something too. It doesn’t matter what.

Having been in the corporate world for many years I had heard most, accepted the validity of many, and used some buzz phrases myself.

But when I asked the vendor of a project management tool if they used it themselves I was startled to hear the straight-faced reply “Oh we eat our own dogfood”.

Apparently, in some circles, it’s well known.