You’ve learned how to make your own Corporate Words, now, learn how to translate Corporate Speak to plain English! Ever find yourself in meetings where practically every word that your bosses and coworkers utter is pure fluff? Ever find youself staring at PowerPoint presentations, trying to make sense of all of the unnecessary flow charts and gibberish? Well then, read on so you can finally crack the corporate code and know exactly what your colleagues are saying! After reading this, you’ll be able to wow upper management with your awe-inspiring grasp of job jargon.
A list of common work words & phrases:
Actionable Insight – This seems to pop up a lot in corporate data sheets and white papers. I guess it means, um, insight into your business? Something like that? Or maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all…hmm…
Business Benefits / Business Challenges – When marketing to other companies, corporations tend to specify types of challenges and benefits by using the modifier “business,” for some reason. This just simply means “challenges” and “benefits.” It really doesn’t make sense to include the word “business” in these phrases – I think customers realize that they are businesses without others telling them so. Just a thought.
Core Competencies – This basically means “skills.” Yup, just skills.
Driving a Cadence – You thought cadences just appeared in music, but not anymore! Your manager might use this phrase when he or she actually means, “creating a schedule.” Along those same lines, I’ve noticed that people are adapting non-work-related words to the workplace more and more. For example, I’ve also heard of the “corporate ecosystem,” and the “pipeline of events,” and “starbursts of key priorities.” Eww.
*Dynamic – This word once meant “pertaining to or characterized by energy or effective action,” according to dictionary.com. Now, however, it’s pretty much lost all meaning. I’ve seen this word in so many presentations, and heard it on so many conference calls, that this word has been reduced to mere corporate filler. If you see or hear this word, just pretend that it’s not there: the odds are, it really offers nothing to the sentence or phrase, and it’s just there because your coworker wants to sound, how shall we say, “dynamic.”
*Here are some other work words that also appear as filler: innovative, robust, key, core, driving, spearheading, strategic, programmatic, informational
Key Plays – So you just got an e-mail, and attached is a PowerPoint presentation with the new boss’ “key plays.” Now, what the heck does that mean? Well, key plays, put very simply, means “goals.” Saying “key plays” just makes the goals sound more lofty and well-developed.
Strategic Initiatives – This just translates to “strategies.” Remember how in middle school, you learned to be concise with your writing and speaking? Well, just bear in mind that when writing or speaking at work, this principle goes out the door. At work, the more unnecessary words, the better.
Synergy – This word is soooo 1990’s Corporate America, but it still pops up in conversation at least biweekly. People should really just say, “cooperation.” Or, “working together.” Or anything else. Seriously.
Some tips for speaking / writing for the workplace:
Always make an acronym for something. Even when it really isn’t applicable. For example, a phrase such as “have a meeting after lunch” can be made into HML. “Presenting in a meeting” can be PM. You get the picture.
Use a lot of unnecessary adjectives. The filler words mentioned earlier are great for this purpose.
Give really simple things complicated names in order to sound smarter. “Actionable insight” is a prime example of this practice. For instance, you can call “learning,” “key intelligence enhancement initiatives.” “Making a spreadsheet” can be “compiling a centralized, aligned source of table-formatted information for ease of viewing.”
Corporate Word of the week:
Auditability (n.) – In the spirit of tax season, I’ve decided to feature this word. This is not actually a word – what this means is “something that can be audited,” or, “something that is likely to be audited.” Like taxes. Yay.
Example – The company’s tax returns were not done correctly, and have much auditability.
Out of the (Big) Blue 