Ultimate jargon busting

In my line manager training workshop today I heard a great example of one team's attempt to cure their boss of a bad jargon habit. They make up trendy-sounding words, plant them in conversation and then wait for him to use them in a team meeting.

At this point, one of them innocently asks what the word means ... whereupon he realises he doesn't actually know, there is much guffawing, and the team does a little lecturing on the perils of meaningless business speak. He's not cured yet, but it's certainly an entertaining way of going about it.

One of their 'sounds like it could be a good piece of consultant speak but we made it up' terms was wind-tunnelling.  Which was, indeed, duly picked up and used by said manager in a team briefing session.  The funny but sad point was that other people in today's session realised they'd heard the term at work too, and thought it was hilarious that it was spreading!  However, a quick search on google reveals it does exist. It's 'a method which encourages SMEs to adapt their strategies to changing markets and constantly reappraise their basic assumptions' or a 'process used by scenario thinkers'. 

Oh dear.

Sue

PS Regular readers may be amused to note that my ability to end up with 'interesting' male travel companions continues unabated.  Today I ended up texting Liam to call me, to get me politely out of such an encounter. This time I at least had the presence of mind to answer "yes" to the "are you married?" question. But I think next time I'm going to be living with someone, on the grounds that I spent the next fifteen minutes trying to cover up my conspicuously bare wedding ring finger. 

But! In between the cheesy lines ("So, do you and your husband have children? Beautiful women really should have beautiful children".  Please - I never realised men actually SAID that type of thing!) he decided to guess my age ... and guessed it at 42!  Have spent a good ten minutes in front of the mirror debating whether I should start getting seriously worried and wondering whether I've got any articles on restylene and botox!

Comments

[Timm]

Love that story! WIRED Magazine's column "Jargon Watch" (which by the way coined the term "Webmaster" back in the 90ies) is a great place to find new buzzwords.

[Sue]

You know, I really should remember that the brain apparently doesn't cope too well with negatives.

I was really pleased to hear on last week's Black Belt that one of the delegates had been reading the blog. Until she said "I was reading a post about you, actually. Something about you being 42 ..."

NOT being 42. NOT. Actually being A LOT YOUNGER THAN THAT.

I think I'd better read through my key messaging slides again. I need to think harder about what messages people are going to take away ...