"Granular"… "Siloed".. "this space"… management buzz-words 2015-16

‘Thought leaders’!!!!!! Love it. Need to try and slip it into one of tomorrow’s meetings and see if I get any reaction from the other attendees.
This sort of cr*p boils my piss, roasts my goat, and grinds my gears.

“I want you to own this process”.

I have no idea how to do this so don’t ask me .. plus the other translations above

Trust but verify – not be trusted at all, check everything

Aspirational goal – impossible target

I use “granularity” a fair bit, in the context of a computer IT workplace. It seems appropriate for wot I am describing.

P1ss up a rope fekstik….

I used when some pr@t was talking total b0llox.

That’s a lie actually..

I got it from Viz…. 😳

I dislike this stuff because it gets in the way of clear, effective communication.

Mis-use of it does, yes.

Automation, with human curation

Data driven optimisations

I use “granularity” a fair bit, in the context of a computer IT workplace. It seems appropriate for wot I am describing

+1

“Granular” is a really useful word, without any non-corporate-speak equivalent that I can think of.

How would you prefer me to say “lets look at the data on a more granular level”?

“lets look at the data in such a way that it is summarised into groups of a smaller size”?

Misuse of the word “revert” is my biggest bugbear.

How about “in more detail”, “in summary”?

Revert. Yes, dreadful word in corporate speak.

I wouldn’t suggest that these idiots should get in the sea as that would make me as bad as them. But a good old Anglo-Saxon expletive springs to mind.

What about “going forward”?

It’s not like you’ve got a Delorean parked outside, is it? You can’t go back.

Granular..? hmmm… let me see now.

We could try ‘more detailed’

Or maybe ‘higher resolution’

I think both of those would apply far better to examining data than a bad metaphor invoking actual grains.

“Granular” expresses a specific concept simply, with an image that most people will understand. It doesn’t really seem willfully obscure or ambiguous.
Similarly, the image of a “silo” nicely conveys the ideas of physical isolation and lack of communication that can prevent effective collaboration. You can describe all that in long form, or use one word instead.

I think the so-called management jargon that some people get upset about is often just convenient shorthand that eases day to day communication in the workplace. If all this stuff was really so detrimental to effective communication, it would naturally die out because people wouldn’t be able to understand reach other and do their jobs!

What about “going forward”?

It’s not like you’ve got a Delorean parked outside, is it? You can’t go back.

Moving from one place to another in the direction one is facing (rather than, as is inferred, standing still intent on the direction one is not facing)

What’s time got to do with it?!

Right, I’ll defend some

“What your talking about is a dance floor view, you need to use a balcony view.”

What the…..?
I use similar, to try and describe how hard it is when your working (at the coal face 😉 ) in a front line job to see the bigger picture ie your trying it on with the wrong bird, the view from the balcony would tell you this.

Own this – take some **** responsibility.

I’ve recently been told our company is developing a ‘decision tree’ for a project, WTactualF?

A tree logic type flow to help people make decisions, obviously your lot can’t think for themselves or worse do but cock it up.

Ironically there is also a similar correlation between how irate a person gets on this subject and how difficult they are as an employee! (By the way I am not a manager)

They are generally the same people who suggest that your work day should consist of the absolute minimum required, complain about management not communicating but missing all the briefings due to being more important than that.

Granular level – molecular level if you really want to not piss about & look really closely

‘Moving forward together as we follow the science and live our values’

‘Those cakes are not baked yet’

Umm, your work, does it ever involve exposure and possibly injestion of hazardous substances including but limited to asbesos, petroleum products and moon rocks and/or endurance testing whilst undergoing verbal humiliation?

Granular / granularity – I use these quite often…

… But then, I’m a geologist (we classify stuff based on grain size 😉 )

In uses outside of geology… 😉

What size are these metaphorical grains? Are they fine grains, or coarse grains? Rough, or angular? Mineral, or vegetable?

“Covering off contingencies”

“Leveraging and operationalising to improve collaboration”

“Use this training as a vehicle to being the best at winning the right way”

My appraisal form was too granular, apparantly – no idea what that meant – I also gave a “churlish” answer. It didn’t go well. 🙁

Yes, I know Delta does indeed mean difference in a mathematical context, but not in the difference between anticipated and actual sales.

That is a mathematical context! And it’s a shorter fricken word than difference 🙂

The latest one I’ve picked up on is maybe more an Americanism than bull but everyone seems to talk ‘to’ rather than about

I’ll talk to this slide
I’ll now talk to the detail
Here’s the product I’ll talk to

OK then. I don’t think it’ll listen though, talk to us about it

‘Izating’, ‘ifying’ of even both together, izatify….!

We use decision trees to show how the solution has been developed and to demonstrate what other options have been generated and why they’re not being taken forward. With my projects which have tend to have a gestation period of years the project team changes so much that it’s one of the easiest ways to stop new people turning up and asking why don’t we do this? Also useful for the public inquiry it stops embarrassing questions from the opposing barrister.

Another +1 vote for “granularity” in an IT context, it’s a useful metaphor when you’re talking about the input and output to/from services.

We have “cadence” and “velocity” Work for a large US IT corp – it’s all about the cadence of the business. Thank God it’s Friday.

Velocity is an important and specific thing in agile project planning.

Yup, we have decision making documented, kinda have to when you have roughly 2x gigawatt thermal of nuclear fuel to play with.

I use granularity a fair bit to, part of my job is to take a high level design and produce a low level design from it (i.e. take it from vague Visio shapes to something that has enough detail it can actually be implemented). Granularity is handy as it not only implies more detail/lower level but also distinct elements (e.g. breaking down a high-level blob that says “hosting platform” into the component parts).

I’ll use a ‘buzzword’ if I think the audience understands it in the same way as I do and/or we’re doing a sales presentation but in our office, I usually just put the f-word in front of assorted words 😉

“Big Data”. I hate that term.

If all this stuff was really so detrimental to effective communication, it would naturally die out because people wouldn’t be able to understand reach other and do their jobs!

Ah well that’s where I’m mistaken then. I thought it was deliberate obfuscation to disguise the fact that they hadn’t got a clue.

Just make them up. I started using “uncouraging” at work to try and describe how to stop people doing stupid things, but in a positive, feel-good way.

I’ll be happy when it gets into an exec keynote.

From the other thread:

“We are a class leading, customer centric provider who offer best in breed solutions. We don’t go after the low hanging fruit or offer quick and dirty solutions, the way we work is a paradigm shift from the usual migration piece. We can break through the clutter and leverage your fulfillment issues, offering thought leadership on your mission critical systems. But, before I give you my elevator pitch, lets have a further V2V and I can explain our value add.”

“We need to be agile on this”

Hmm…

What you mean is YOU have promised something to someone else with no regard to what is possible, how long it will take or how much it will cost. Now you have flung your faeces loaded ‘promise’ to me in the vain hope that I will dig you out of your big steaming pile.

Alternatively it’s used to ignore the fact that somewhere is chronically understaffed and those poor hapless souls actually doing the work get beaten up for not trying to work 24 hours a day

finbar, are you from Cork and last week had a chat to a colleague about cycling?

Molgrips, no, Sheffield – worth a go though! I’m sure there are many similar conversations happening right now the length and breadth of the country 😀 .

I’m taking “auto suggest” and “velocity” to use next week.

‘Agile’ in a development context is normally taken by the more cynically minded people to mean a desire to make things up as they go along and not have to write any documentation.

It’s a really good way to wind up a friend (he does ‘proper’ agile), just keep using the A word for things like hacking together a bastardised piece of code.

Yes – Agile and agile are different. As an adjective, it means you need to be flexible and that necessitates a different management approach.

However the Agile Method is not a buzzword, nor does it mean making things up as you go along. It is a very clearly defined process that can MANAGE change. You show your customers what you’re working on, and then IF things change in the middle then the process will cater for that and you can keep the project going.

Customer: “That’s not what I wanted, I wanted X not Y”
Developer: “No problem, we can change it. It’ll take this many story points, that means you lose A and B from this sprint, and we’ll schedule them into extra sprint at the end” etc.

I’m trying to get “We’re all tea-bagging the same Air Blade” into the next Sales Meeting.

The boss at my old place was too stupid to know the difference between ‘elude’ and ‘allude’. He was forever referring to stuff that people had ‘eluded’ to in meetings 😆

Not a buzzword as such, but a collection of peeves – why when beginning a PowerPoint (peeve #1 right there) presentation do people show a talk outline in detail occupying a good percentage of their allocated time (peeve #2) and say they will “go through” a topic (#3) It sounds like it’s a chore to present. If it’s a chore for the presenter, why the hell should I sit and listen to it ?

It’s all about the 6P’s.