It's not even 9:00 and already I've got:
"For AI, Marketing is a target rich environment."
They are not wrong.
When I worked for a big consulting firm, you'd have needed an A0 sheet and tiny writing to play BS bingo in customer meetings. Early on when I was a very junior oik, I was proud to be singled out by a partner as "the guardian of the idea pool" only to find that meant I was taking the meeting minutes 😉
We could deep-dive, side-bar and synergise with the best of them.
I don't miss it.
They are not wrong.
You can be not wrong and express it in such a way that is more appropriate for an overweight middle-aged mid-level manager in a struggling SaaS company.
If he wanted to be Maverick he should have joined the RAF.
"In the [whatever] space".
It's not a space it's just "whatever".
MrsMC has brought home that really annoyingly patronising "ABSOLUTELY" for when she agrees with me.
"Shall I do a stir fry for tea?"
"ABSOLUTELY"
I'm just going out to stock up on some fava beans and a nice Chianti....
I caused great amusement amongst colleagues and rolled eyes amongst managers when announcing in a meeting that "we don't need to go to the far end of a fart..."
You can be not wrong and express it in such a way that is more appropriate for an overweight middle-aged mid-level manager in a struggling SaaS company.
If he wanted to be Maverick he should have joined the RAF.
Oh gawd, that gave me flashbacks to all that alpha male stuff we had to deal with. Military analogies were the thing in my time in Consulting. What's your "first intent", BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front), "The enemy also makes plans", etc, etc and occasionally a toe cringing speech from an ex-military person who was clearly milking the coaching/speaking circuit. Yes I can absolutely see how "implementing SAP in a large grocery chain" is exactly the same as jumping out of a helicopter;)
This thread has made me grumpy.
I caused great amusement amongst colleagues and rolled eyes amongst managers when announcing in a meeting that "we don't need to go to the far end of a fart..."
Ooh, I'm stealing that one 🙂
There was someone in a group on facebook asking about a freehub body for their wheel. "I've reached out to (company) and will circle back.." Why couldn't you just contact (company) directly without inflicting this nonsense on us?
"we don't need to go to the far end of a fart..
Apparently you can't refer to the latter stages of a long-term project, in an all party meeting, as the vinegar strokes. Who knew?
On a slight bs tangent, I did ask a manger how he was going to deliver on his promise of "We'll just make it work" when he had nothing to do with making it work and wouldn't be doing the work - just got a blank look.
shall we take this offline?
Yes I can absolutely see how "implementing SAP in a large grocery chain" is exactly the same as jumping out of a helicopter
Well, both do have large possibilities of fsck-ups if the people doing the thing go the wrong way
Also, anyone that uses the term Workshop when it doesn't doesn't involve sawdust, swarf or the smell of hard working dusty electric motors needs to go and have a word with themselves.
Does anybody still ring fence their unicorns?
shall we take this offline?
Or in Anglo Saxon: 'Will you just STFU!'...
I recognise the Consultancy thing above^. Replace 'SAP' for 'Oracle' and that was my bag for 10 years... Star Chambers and Low Hanging Fruit were Signposted everywhere. <sigh>
<edit>
Also, anyone that uses the term Workshop
Guilty as charged. Usually meant to describe a group of people working interactively/collaboratively to arrive at a specific conclusion AKA 'meeting'... 😏
I used to love watching W1A, for Siobhan from the Perfect Curve PR agency, because the character is just so terrifyingly accurate.
I have sat in meetings with clones of her as they talk the same utter bullshit, and dreamt of elaborate ways to end my own life so that I didn’t have to listen to another word of it
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.
Verbatim.
Makes me think of some of the terms I hear and the way they seem to be adopted by others in a workplace as a way of being in or moving into an in-group of talking the same language, and the kind of pity I have for them. Why would you hear that stuff and think 'yep, using that..' like an office Nathan Barley.. It's weird that although it's often a cover for being a bluffer, some of the worst afflicted have been some of the more (otherwise) effective people I've worked with. Like being able to think well and self-awareness just aren't linked.
The most virulent term I've known was 'the piece around ... ' or 'all across the piece'. So you want to describe something that needs sorting in a couple of areas. 'Are we on top of the piece around .. ?' The piece around the what the f are you on about? 😀
I often wanted to ask if we could ring it.
Ring what?
The piece. You ring piece .. the thing. Like ring fence. You ring piece ... the thing.
MrsMC has brought home that really annoyingly patronising "ABSOLUTELY" for when she agrees with me.
That's the problem with this stuff, you hear it often enough and it becomes a real conscious effort not to start saying it yourself.
I've caught myself saying things like "going forward..." and I want to disembowel myself with spears because it's such a ****ing pointless self-evident thing. Like, where else am I going to go? Sideways? "Well, we've got this situation now, but once I hop in the TARDIS and change history..."
The most virulent term I've known was 'the piece around ... ' or 'all across the piece'.
Yeah, I am not enjoying the whole "I'm working on the XXX piece at the moment".
The one that is making my teeth itch at the moment is "I will revert", because apparently typing "I'll get back to you on that one" is too hard (and too polite).
A few of us used to play the game of using made up jargon and seeing you would repeat it. We were the 3 'southern' consultants to a company based in Manchester so on the long drive up to the quarterly meetings we would give each other words or phrases that we had to us in our presentation.
I got given 'Long tailed armidillo' which I thought was particularly challenging.
I used it to describe an graph showing the consumption of a service over time. There was a small bump at the start from the launch (head of the armadillo) and then a big bulge as everyone started using it (body of the armadillo) and then it tailed off (tail of the armadillo). The longer the tail, the more money you made selling the service so we were:
"Hunting the long tailed armadillo"
It raise a smile at the presentation but a few months later I heard the sales director at a public conference stating that he was 'hunting the log tailed armadillo'. No explanation about what that meant and no comprehension at all from the audience.
I'll get back to you on that one / circle back = Will do.
Address the piece around / process it / run up the flagpole = Crack on.
Reach out = Now then.
"Hunting the long tailed armadillo" - Do what?
After the planned lifespan of the service there is no further development and minimal support soi is basically money for nothing. The longer the tail, the better.
Obvious really 😉
There was someone in a group on facebook asking about a freehub body for their wheel. "I've reached out to (company) and will circle back.." Why couldn't you just contact (company) directly without inflicting this nonsense on us?
Hard to circle back without a freehub body.
MCJnr and his fiance are both in consulting/system design fields. They'd better not be involving me in any wedding planning meetings
That's the problem with this stuff, you hear it often enough and it becomes a real conscious effort not to start saying it yourself.
Yes! I used 'synergies' recently and meant it 🤮
There definitely seems to be a whole ecosystem of people who talk to one another like this, my wife and I (totally separate companies, totally different industries, more or less completely distinct job descriptions) nonetheless are both having to put up with our respective companies ripping up their goal setting and performance monitoring systems for no apparent purpose other than to justify the existence of expensive HR teams who no doubt talk the talk and play the game (and get paid better than us lowly serfs who actually do the work 🙄 ) but don't seem to do much other than waste our time by completely changing how we have to set our own goals (it's not like HR do this for us, or the shiny new software they're 'implementing').
The amount of BS in these presentations is off the chart, i don't even understand half of what they're saying any more but I guess it loosely translates as 'here's how we're going to justify paying lower/ no bonuses next year...'
I used to hear about some of these companies then go to their website to see if there was actually any explanation of what they did. So many times it was just puff about leveraging synergies and harmonising strategies to deliver improved life cycles etc. Not just "we look at your business processes and work out how to make them better" or anything that makes sense to a normal person.
Hard to circle back without a freehub body.
Probably doing it for clicks…
Synergi and Revert used in the contexts above, that's just English. No problem with that.
I've caught myself saying things like "going forward..." and I want to disembowel myself with spears because it's such a ****ing pointless self-evident thing. Like, where else am I going to go? Sideways?
This gets said a lot on train announcements now.
"Our next station stop will be Derby after which the train will continue forwards to..."
Well I bloody hope it's going forwards! Sideways in a train is a really bad and often quite short-lived state of affairs. What's wrong with "This service will call at Derby, blah, blah and London". ?!
"The enemy also makes plans", etc, etc and occasionally a toe cringing speech from an ex-military person who was clearly milking the coaching/speaking circuit
We had Ben Roberts-Smith do a business breakfast “Boys own” speech once regaling us with how he won his VC. It made me feel deeply uncomfortable to say the least.
If somebody intends "reaching out" to a manufacturer for advice, then reverting, I'd assume they're planning to ignore any advice and go back to their prior state - ie ignore any advice or offers made by the "reachee"
The one that is making my teeth itch at the moment is "I will revert", because apparently typing "I'll get back to you on that one" is too hard (and too polite).
Oh, is that what it means?
I had someone say that to me a while ago and then I never heard from them again. I had no idea what it meant so I took it to mean they'd changed their mind about needing to talk with me. Revert to a previous idea, sort of thing.
Cc'ing in someone for "grip and control"
That's a new one that's cropped up a few times recently.
Starter for ten still comes up a lot, and the same project manager that says that says "swap out" and "change out" all the bloody time which gets on my tits.
If you’re a member of The Four Tops, you’re reaching out.
Everyone else is just getting in touch.
I used to love watching W1A
Are you watching the #### ##### Cup one? It's toe curlingly good.
Good old Human Remains 👍how to make a career out of talking bollocks to justify their existence 🙄
Ooo oo, we've just had a circular/update from the local Council. Apparently they're 'moving at pace' - to replace the bin bags with bins... 😜 <gah!> Tosseurs...
A different bullshit bingo. I've just driven past this sign.
Sideways in a train is a really bad and often quite short-lived state of affairs.
That reminds me of a British Rail announcement on I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again (surely I'm not the only one on here old enough to remember Angus Prune?).
"The train now standing at platforms 3,4,5,6 and 7 has come in sideways".
Where I work is currently being 'right sized' and to do this they've employed a new CEO who used that term in front of the whole staff to tell us that soon there will only be half the number of people there. Absolute *******.
"Our next station stop will be Derby after which the train will continue forwards to..."
Problematic if you ever get the train to or from Whitby as it stops and changes direction (driver and guard change ends) halfway to Middlesbrough.
Sideways in a train is a really bad and often quite short-lived state of affairs.
That reminds me of a British Rail announcement on I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again (surely I'm not the only one on here old enough to remember Angus Prune?).
"The train now standing at platforms 3,4,5,6 and 7 has come in sideways".
Presumably that was before potters bar.
This misuse of the word 'revert' may simply be a mis-translation thing. Couple of years ago, I was working with & alongside a group of employees from a consultancy whose head office and holding company were based in India, so almost all of them were from that geography, and English wasn't their first language. It came up a lot in emails and in conversation. At some stage in the fairly recent past, I suspect someone had seen or heard the expression "I'll get back to you", and decided to find an alternative; put it into whatever translation app, and out came something containing the word 'revert' ("I'll revert to you"?)- so that got adopted and has now fallen into common (mis)use as a sort of shorthand or jargon. To UK-raised ears it sounds weird, but not to everyone.
Anyway, it's still worthy of putting on the Bullshit Bingo card.
Advert for a Shark hoover. It has "reveal technology" to show up dirt.
It’s a little light on the front.
