Hi all. Business blogger David Silverman has hit it on the head with his list of top 10 words and phrases to ban in business either because they’re imprecise, clumsy, ill-used or just plain hackneyed. Another great list comes today from David Meerman Scott.
Both lists remind me of the rampant vaporspeak right before the dot-com bust, when people offered awful constructions like “Our company is the industry leader in value-added, customer-focused, end-t0-end solutions for enterprise.” Eeeeee. Among those on David’s hit list: “people manager,” “net-net,” and “take-away.”
My additions to the list:
1) “Target.” As in target the consumer, target marketing, target audience. This is one of a long list of military-inspired business words and phrases that can and should be retired. “We want to launch the product (missile) but first we must target (aim to kill) our audience (victims).” Ugh. In the new world order of business communications, aren’t we supposed to be conversing with our customers rather than marking them for annihilation?
2) “2.0. ” Web 2.0. Business 2.0. Life 2.0. Enough 2.0. It was a clunky term to describe a new type of adoption of the Web, mainly social media on user-generated content. Guess what — the Web evolved, it didn’t enter a new phase of being like drifting from the Mesozoic to the Cenozoic. I actually had a colleague tell me (in front of a client, bad girl!) that I was “so 1.0.”). She was lucky she was on the other end of a conference line and not in the room with me or I might have 1.0′d her upside the head.
3) Sports analogies. “Kickoff.” “Home run.” “Full court press.” “Tee off.” “Go to bat.” Pernennial favorites of business and politics, these images let people who should be better with language off the proverbial hook by subsituting good language with clunky everyman images. What’s next, board games? Checkers? Chess? “Id better get my pieces lined up, I don’t want to let the competition to King Me.” “It’s time to start thinking about a nontraditional Gambit. No one’s going to take our queen!”
4) “The long tail.” Another odd bit of jargon thrown around in tech circles of late reflecting a graphical representation of a particular strategy of selling, inventory and distribution. An arcane term to say the least and often used imprecisely. Hint – if people in the meeting are scratching their heads while you’re speaking (yes, I’ve seen it) that’s a clue that they live in a ZIP code outside the bubble. Time to adjust your prose…
5) “Leverage.” A noun that has been hijacked by action-verbophiles that has a variety of meanings these days. In one form it’s to “make use of” while in other cases it’s a description of financial obligation. In general, I’m not a huge fan of nouns that become verbs unless you’re using them artfully in literature or poetry. “The bleak clouds blanketed the morning sky.” In business it can just be odd. Kind of like that boss I once had was fond of using ”architect” as a verb. “I’d like to see if we can architect a solution.” I’m sorry, I think I just threw up in my mouth.
What are your linguistic pet peeves? Comment away!
2 Comments
April 17, 2009 at 10:15 pm
How about corny referencs to the 7 Deadly Sins in business faux pas
http://iloveclosing.com/2009/04/17/the-sin-of-selling/
Have a good weekend
The Closer
PS I swear to go a whole week without leveraging the term “leverage”… what have I become?
April 19, 2009 at 9:08 pm
[...] therefore, I do love reading a good critique of corporate speak – my friend Tim Hart writes on his blog about the topic and it’s well worth a read and chuckle. Actually, what I love watching more [...]