Have you heard you boss suggesting you to join a tiger team? Yeah, we all have been there. Remember those hated business phrases that our managers mumble all the time? And you wish you could just tell them to tape their mouth. Well, here I am to address your managers and tell them to stop using those annoying office buzzwords. You’re welcome! (Now just pray that your manager reads this one.)
Below is a list of most hated business phrases that you should stop using:
- “At the end of the day” instead of saying “after all the important part is…”
- “S.W.A.T Team” to refer to those fat guys in the suit to share their expert opinion.
- “Open the Kimono”, the creepiest of the all the office buzzwords when you can simply ask to “provide or reveal more information”.
- “Make Hay”, when all you need to say is “be productive in a shorter period of time”.
- “Ideate/ ideation” or even worse “Idea shower” used as a replacement to the negativity of the word “brainstorm”.
- “Growth hacker/ growth hacking” is the new term to describe the process of carrying out tests to identify the quickest way to grow a business.
- “Corporate Values”, well, corporations don’t have values, the people who run those corporations do, so please don’t bother using it.
- “Bleeding edge”, unless you are manufacturing some magic sword, you don’t need to use this euphemism for saying “cutting edge”.
- “Helicopter view”, yes captain, we’ll prefer the term “broader view” instead.
- The most used phrase is “Think outside the box”, everyone is so sick of it that I don’t feel like explaining it anymore.
- “Low-hanging fruit”, a phrase that would be suitable for some children in an orchard is rather used to refer to an easy task.
- “Drink the kool-aid”. Are you seriously referring to the Jonestown Massacre to simply suggest someone to blindly accept something?
- How difficult is it to say “organized”? But no, you would use “ducks in a row”, right? (I have a confession to make: I use it too, but not often. Don’t judge me please!)
- “It is what it is.” Ugh, I know right?
- “Do more with less” instead of saying “Work Smarter”. This makes me wonder, do more of what using less of what?
- Be direct in saying that you won’t be able to do the task or project instead of using the fancy term “We can’t boil the ocean”. I mean have you tried?
- In the perfect world, “Bite the bullet” would be replaced by “take the difficult step”.
- Instead of saying “a common occurrence”, they would say “par for the course” to just jazz it up a bit.
- “Double Click” when you mean to say that something needs to be examined or considered.
- Among all the hated business phrases, this one is the most annoying – “Mumpreneur”. Why would someone use such a sexist word to describe an entrepreneur who happens to be a mom!
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