Bullshit Bingo, the revised edition

One of my work colleagues once became obsessed with using the word ‘decimate’ to describe the process of dividing a problem up into smaller chunks (10 presumably). He actually once told a potential (and very confused) client that we ‘decimate projects’. After that meeting I told him that if he ever used that word again I’d tell him to shut up there and then no matter who was in the room.

Have we ringfenced the unicorn on this one yet?

Not heard it for a while, though someone snuck ‘ringfencing the Crown Jewels’ into a business review at the end of last year.

😆

I’m fortunate enough to be self-employed now but a previous boss used to use the word ‘elude’ instead of allude, which amused me. Another previous boss got a promotion and started wearing clear glass glasses to make himself look like less of a thicko chav, and I burst into laughter when he used the word ‘synergy’ to describe a shelf of christmas crackers 😆

‘Surface’ as a verb

I hadn’t come across this one before, but lo and behold, bang on cue, an email just came through containing this delight.

Submarines quite often surface, no?

Thing is, it’s contagious.

absolutely this.

The one I mentioned was mentioned once a couple of weeks ago by the MD, taken up by the Ops director (an idiot) and now is the default word in every conference call with the whole team…

Hateful

re decimate a colleague had one of those cartoons up with a line of centurions – one had been nobbled, caption from one surviving c to another along lines of “this decimation stuff isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be”

Have a colleague who uses skin in the game and ‘piece’ crops up a lot recently – oil and gas industry so maybe you just get pulled along with using them?

Going forward let’s leverage our synergies across the piece so we can totally own the mindshare in this space.

Bandwidth is used on an almost hourly basis where I work. It absolutely drives me mental.

Some class leading thought leadership being written here by some best in breed contributor’s. Good stuff.

heard most of them before including ‘wash it’s own face’ in the 1980’s. Usually used to describe an application for a loan for a purpose that generated enough cash to make the repayments.

The current one that everyone in my org is using is ‘disrupt’ as in we need to disrupt the industry but of course gets used everywhere for lots of other reasons.

Other good ones I’ve not seen mentioned already are ‘we need to shoot the puppy’ i.e. make an unpopular decision or ‘hydro-digital’ for a high level estimate i.e. put a wet finger in the air.

EDIT: ‘Gain traction’ is also a few years old but not seen it above

‘hydro-digital’ for a high level estimate i.e. put a wet finger in the air.

Oh, I’m having that, that’s brilliant.

‘hydro-digital’ for a high level estimate i.e. put a wet finger in the air.
Oh, I’m having that, that’s brilliant.

My pleasure! 8)

” How difficult can this be? It’s not rocket surgery!” WTF???

Keep on adding value

Optioneering

Choosing best athlete

Robust processes

Been using rocket surgery for about 20 years!

Literally extrapolating synergistic linkage for sub-triad decades.

My personal favourite. “Oh for f***’s sake, shut up”.

I don’t hear many at all, simply because we all speak so many different languages (both in the usual sense and because it’s a load of lawyers, bankers, engineers and architects), so plain speak is needed otherwise we never get anywhere.

That said, there is one chap I work with who uses the same phrase over and over for describing delaying something we don’t want to deal with now but know we will have to at some point:

“Kicking the can down the road”

🙂

“just bayoneting the dead” – I’m going to try and use that one this week!

Not overheard directly, but passed on, “bio-break”.

Oh, just heard this one “Silence is consent”.

Currently in my organisation, people are ‘gatekeeping their silos’.

“We should kick this into the long grass for now.”
10 words to say forget it.
RM.

Not overheard directly, but passed on, “bio-break”.

Standard phrase in multiplayer online gaming, heard it all the time in my Warcraft days.

Onboard/ed/ing is used fairly regularly. Makes be want to kick small animals.

‘Organisations/sectors/divisions etc must consume their own smoke’
‘Completed by close of play’ (irritatingly shortened to COP by email)
‘Battle rhythm for today’

“We need to dovetail this into the scenario” was a favourite used by an old boss of mine.
It is now the agreed ‘safety word’ that I use in conferences when I can hear my MD building up to excessive BS.

A few years ago a Dutch colleague was on the phone while 2 of us were in the car. After the call he announced “Tomorrow, we cut the balls off the rabbit!”

My mate and I exchanged ‘WTF’ looks, thinking it was bullshit bingo and I asked for an explanation.

He said “That was my wife. The rabbit, he’s very aggressive. Tomorrow, the vet, he cut his balls off.”

Priceless.

We did manage to use it in a call later with one of the worst bingo offenders present, so if one day you hear it in business, maybe we started that one.

DNA. Everything ‘has it in its DNA’ these days. Brand DNA. Product DNA. FFS.

“are you the chicken or the pig in this breakfast”.

My bullshit haul from a workshop last week:

On The Radar
Territory
Strategy
Up-Skill
Onboarding
Micromanage
Comfort Zone
Leverage
Re-Crystallise
Call To Arms
Thrashing Out
Piggybacking
One Stop shop
Link In
Cascade
Pillars
Harmonisation
OTIF
Whitespace

Have we had ‘value add’ yet? As in ‘We really need to be sighted on the value add here’

Saddens me every time.

‘Battle rhythm for today’

😐

send an e-blast

Put the tiger in the hamster

the goldilocks option

knock on the door of uncertainty

risk isn’t a gamble

treasure the hairy map

start it up and see what catches fire (its software, not a rocket ship).

“Treasure the hairy map”. WTF? I can’t even begin to image what that might refer to unless it’s perhaps checking the back of your hand whilst masturbating. That at least would make some sense unlike most of these meetings that infect businesses these days preventing us getting any work done.

Is there a TLA for the way I feel about this?

‘Surface’ as a verb

I hadn’t come across this one before, but lo and behold, bang on cue, an email just came through containing this delight.

Hmm, I’ve got a surfacer, and quite often timber is surfaced with it.

Without that machine it’s utter bollocks though!

People saying “in terms of” when that actually mean “with relation to” or “regarding”.

“I’m going hull down for the PM” meaning “Please don’t disturb me this afternoon”

Treasure the hairy map – looking at a load of user experiences that cross over and sometimes didn’t end in a positive interaction leading to a non-linear logic path cloud.

‘We need to Solutionise this’

f%^& off its come up with a solution. We are not heat treating aluminium.
Called the main offender out on this in front of the whole office, twice. She has stopped, but I suspect only temporarily.

Bloody acronyms too. I like to ask what they mean. It no longer amazes me that people do not know what they stand for.

Not one I’ve heard but my wife did during a communications meeting – “we are where we are” 😕

We spend a lot of time in meetings working out how to get on the “Happy Path”.

(IT project meetings mainly).

So what are your takeaways from this thread?