Office jargon, acronyms and fillers have taken the workplace hostage. Prior to entering the business world, it was my understanding that phrases such as “from a ____ perspective”, “across the board”, and “let’s table it” were reserved only for the Bill Lumbergh’s of the world. Upon embarking on my professional journey, it became evident that there existed an undiagnosed vocabulary virus running rampant in corporate America.
Today, 5 years into my recruiting career, little has changed. With more analogies and acronyms being churned out every day, American professionals have become incapable of maintaining an original lexicon. The fact is, when communicating with others in the office it requires less effort to “stand on the shoulders of giants” than it does to “reinvent the wheel”. When over 70% of employed Americans average well over 40 hours of work per week, it comes as no surprise that the convenience of these canned, prefabricated phrases grossly outweighs the effort required to “think outside of the box”.
Unfortunately, this tendency to follow “the path of least resistance” has led to dependency. As a New Year’s resolution for this year, I challenged myself to change this trend in my own “B2B” communication. In very little time, it was clear to me how difficult that challenge would be. Words and phrases such as “operating in a vacuum”, “shelving an idea”, “bandwidth”, “low hanging fruit”, “piggy backing” and “action items” had engrained themselves into my daily vernacular… I had become a 27 year old Bill Lumbergh.
Today, I am a recovering corporate lingo addict and I am proud to say that it has been 8 work days since I last “set a benchmark”, “let the inmates run the asylum”, “put a stake in the ground”, “left money on the table”, “tore down the silo’s”, “put a face to a name”, “saw the view from 30,000ft”, “offered my 2 cents”, “drank from a fire hose” or “addressed the elephant in the room”.
…One day at a time…
For a list of some of our least favorite Office Jargon, check out this blog from Recruiting Supervisor, Hilary! http://bit.ly/1pGsk4o
