Corporate Twaddlespeak | BTalk Australia

I hate "Moving forward ... ". What other direction would you be moving?

I hate "Moving forward ...". What other direction would you be moving?

This one isn's corporate, but bugs me, as I spent my college years as a waitress. We used to stop by tables and say "How is everything?" once the diners were served. In recent years, I keep hearing "How is the food tasting?". Drives me nuts. Not to mention that food can't taste....

I agree with Brian on 'moving forward'.

I hear its cousin 'going forward' a lot. Try adding it to the end of any sentence: 'We'll progress that project, going forward."; 'Our strategic plan will point the way, going forward'.

Now, add in my other favourite: negative growth. Imagine a sentence that reads: 'We'll be entering a period of negative growth, going forward." Is the opposite of that 'We'll be leaving a period of positive decline, moving backward.'? What DOES it all mean?

The other gobbledegook-speak I can't bear is the lazy transformation of nouns into really, really bad verbs. The latest I've heard? Helming! As in 'Danny DeVito will be helming the movie." What in the name of all that's linguistically holy is served by that dreadful construction?!?!??!

Oh, yeah, and forgot to add that much twaddlespeak allows the speaker to say things that can't be delivered upon, but that sound very grand, or that hide the real intention. I'm particularly aware of 'our staff are our greatest resource and we're going to empower them'. Oh really? Most of the time, this phrase means 'we know you're unhappy, but there's nothing we can do about it except placate you with empty verbiage'.

The one that really gets me is the use of "Leverage" as a verb. Seriously people! Why "leverage" some thing when you can simply "use" it or "take advantage" of it.

Me? I just have issues with "issues."

Think outside the box! I don't live or work in a box and I am not sure how to think outside of one. I just want to work for a company that thinks! Period.

The two I dont like are: "stay ahead of the bow wave of change" which is a comment usually used after we have been hit by the ship driving the bow wave, or my other favourite is: "cascade that down to your subordinates through their objectives" read more simply as "palm it off to someone less important, like I have to you".

'Let's dialog about that'
'How many touchpoints will we have?'
'Reach out to Joe and ask...'
'we'll need to regroup'
'let's take that conversation offline'

"living the passion"

What the %#^E does that mean?

"Metrics" is one I truly hate.

In my experience this means spending hours building spreadsheets and making graphs to measure things that either:

a)Vary so slightly over time that there is no need to measure them, or

b)Things we have zero control over and cannot influence in any way.