Give me your best management speak ……..

There is no "I" in team (but there is a me)

i think we need to consume our own smoke on this one

we've been singing at too many people's weddings

what's the elephant in the room

all genuine, sadly

I was once at a conference and the lady giving the talk quizzed us on buzz words. when she asked what responsivity meant , I said i wasn't sure but i knew it involved ice cubes and nipples. everyone in the room laughed, except one.

The correct response to "there is no 'I' in 'team'" is "no, but there is a 'u' in c**t"

management speak . . . . ?

Do they?

"Please do the needful"

Seeing that a lot lately in support emails. I translate it as "please put this request to the bottom of the pile."

"Let's not try and electrify the ocean here"

I work with someone who says this quite frequently, and it always sends me off on a little voyage of bemusement. She uses it when someone proposes doing more than is strictly necessary, and most people get her meaning I think, but I just can't comprehend the basis of the phrase.

Boil the ocean would make some kind of sense, but electrify?

"We appreciate all your hard work"

Value Adding.

Socialise the concept with our key stakeholders.

I fully intend to use the phrase "bang in their back doors" at the next available opportunity!

Trouble is "management speak" is getting into places it really shouldn't be.

Take the military for instance. Recently we've have the word "Surge", when what they really mean is "reinforcements". Of course using reinforcements suggests that perhaps we may have underestimated the strength or tenacity of the enemy, and we have to send in some back-up…

Then there's "Spike" as in a "spike of terrorist activity" which seems to suggest that like on a graph the spike goes rapidly up, and then rapidly down again, when of course what they mean is simply "More". But again that doesn't convey quite the same level of control over the situation…

I was in a meeting with senior management who nodded sagely in response to my suggestion that the only way to address the problem under discussion was maybe to do a reach-around. Can't believe I got away with it.

"Don't argue with me, just get off your ar5e and do it"

I'm the new breed of management

I'm scared.

I've lived in China for over 7 years, and I'm about to join an international company for the first time.
I haven't worked for anybody for almost 12 years.
I'm almost 40 years old, I have no idea what you guys are talking about.
Is there a dictionary?

i often get replies to my mails/notes from the boss with "i concure" and that's it. Also the boss is fond of the "please sort" hoping that any message below is legible enough.

my fav one TO my boss was "the f### refinery need to get a grip of their sh1t" didn't go down well..

I can't believe no one has yet said the classic
"let's think outside the box" !

"let's park that" does annoy me, though thankfully my work isn't too management speak heavy (i do have too many bosses tho)

Is there a dictionary?

It is all BS you just say something you've made up with confidence.

Your audience may at first look confused but if said with enough conviction you'll have created your own entry in the dictionary.

has anyone mentioned Gant charts and SMART objectives yet? if not then a serious thought shower might be required to ponder the qualitative and quantitative merrits of this thread

[winks+finger pitsols]

How about we apply some lean thinking to this problem. I'll just have to get my six sigma black belt out….

"Yes, but what's the exam question?"

and

"It's not within my 'gift' to…" STFU!

are becoming annoyingly infectous at the moment, as is the word 'signage' which never really bothered me till someone else pointed it out as odd.

Oh no! Someone has just mention LEAN!!!! argggh it's the new mantra at work and everything has to be LEANED ……….aaaaarrrggghhhhh 😯

*sound of window breaking and the distant sound of flesh hitting the ground*

'Re-arranging the deck chairs on the Tiatanic'

'this is turning into a mongolian cluster fu*k' (shouted in a texan drawl)
got to love working in the oil industry.

christ someone's going to have to 5S the mess jj55 has left behind

a hothouse environment

a vertical learning curve

"ownership of" meaning "responsibility for"

"colleague" to mean "employee"

and all the false, straight-out-of-the-management-manual body language that goes with it…

And…
"if you're not the lead dog, the view's always the same"

It's the Non-management speak that gets me.

Why start a sentence with "Basically" or the perennial favourite, "Like".

PS.
As an aside, it’s also very annoying when someone says, “I was sat in one meeting”.
No. No. No.
“I was sitting…” or “I sat …”, never mix the tenses!

"It doesn't **** work, it's never **** worked, so I'm just going to ignore it until you make it **** work"

Spoken by me to someone more senior on another team 🙂 I think it's safe to say that I'm about as high in the management structure as I'm going to get 😀

"Productise" is one I use. My bosses complain that staff don't "take ownership" but I don't see shares on offer.

I was in a face2face in a glass box yesterday, with some key players sorting out the critical path in p3c.
Gah!