Thursday, August 25, 2005

Jargon of the Modern Business World

There's always new sayings in the corporate world that don't exist anywhere else. Here's a sample of my current favorites:
  • Visibility - as in "I need to have visibility of the situation." What happened to saying something like, "I need to know about that situation"? Since when are budget gaps something that you need to have "visibility" into or about?
  • Net - this has been around for a long time, but it kills me. "Net" means "in summary" or "the bottom line" as in "Net, we need to find $2 million to pay for that project."
  • Learnings - this is one that I've always sworn to never use, but I've given into peer pressure and use it. As in, "what are the learnings from that project?" What happened to saying, "what did we learn on that project?" I don't know, but I'm now guilty of using the word, "learnings".
  • Against - As in "we are working against a 12-24 year-old target." Doesn't that sound like we are anti 12-24 year-olds?? WRONG, quite the opposite. That statement means that we are targeting 12-24 year-olds, which means that we like them and want them to like us!
  • Transparancy - Related very much to visibility above. Used today in a meeting: "I need this to be transparent to the team."

3 comments:

CaliforniaGrammy said...

You're right! What's wrong with "normal" everyday usage of "regular" vocabulary that EVERYBODY understands? Peer presure sucks!

What are the learnings? Now really . . . who ever heard of "learnings?" Whacha learn makes a whole lot more sense!

CaliforniaGrammy said...

I mean peer presSure . . .

jennavar said...

Corporate jargon.... too funny how it is adapted as everyday vocabulary in the workplace. And then when you accidently use it in public, the strange faces you get are too much. I wonder who started "the learnings". That is an interesting one.