What's the worst "corporate speak/buzzwords" that you absolutely hate?

Alright, team, let’s circle back and ensure we’re fully aligned on our north star objectives. We need to leverage synergy, engage in blue-sky thinking, and touch base on our pain points to drive mission-critical outcomes. But let’s not boil the ocean with unnecessary jargon - at the end of the day, we need to optimize our bandwidth for real, value-driven impact. If we keep moving the needle with this kind of thought leadership theater, we risk losing sight of our core competencies and drowning in a sea of meaningless buzzwords. Let’s pivot toward clear, actionable insights and sunset the overuse of strategic messaging before it becomes a blocker to true innovation. Instead of just playing the fast-follow game with every trending framework, let’s focus on original, high-impact execution that actually drives results.

~~Thoughts?~~ Chris, do you have any builds?

No?

Good. Then let's action this and drive it across the finish line!

I heard "rightsizing" for the first time last year.

I have no idea what knucklehead PR dumbass came up with that but it made the following layoffs even more unpalatable.

"Tribal knowledge."

image: We, clan. Together, strong.
reality: Ask Tommy if he remembers how to reset the printer

Though, I actually like this one. It's a pretty cool phrase you can use anywhere.

Bio break.

I don’t think I have to elaborate on that one.

Alignment
Scalable
Circle back

If you use these regularly I KNOW the meeting you just booked me into should have been an email.

Referring to people, staff as resources. Nice and dehumanizing.

I had one retail manager who constantly kept using "moving forward" for everything. It was so freaking grating!

I hate that I've learned to censor myself around these soulless void-skulls by replacing "problem" with "challenge." No, I don't "solve problems", because to acknowledge something as a problem is negativity we just don't need here at Emperor Clothing Inc! I "tackle challenges"!

It's so freaking goofy and they just eat it up. Everything needs some sort of business-positive spin or they lose their minds and think you're not being a "team player."

quiet quitting

How dare you not overachieve for your corporate overlords!

Anything they use to replace the word "layoffs".

"Department / Corporate Retreat"

As in, "we're holding our annual corporate retreat next Wednesday! It'll be offsite, you're all required to be there, and we'll be spending the day having a 6 hour meeting about absolutely nothing, just like we do every year. But dont worry, when we're done we'll play a game no one wants to play, or do a craft no one wants to do, but everyone will pretend they enjoy it because if they don't, they're not 'team players.'"

This year, our day-long-nothing-meeting was about how management is working to secure everyone's jobs despite budget cuts, and we have nothing to worry about. Then we took a personality quiz that said I was a character from Stranger Things. Then the next day, they told me I'm getting laid off and have 3 months left at the company.

Fucking RETREATS are so relaxing.

That they treat you like "family"

There are many but I find "let's double-click on that" particularly grating

“We work hard and play hard” makes my skin crawl. Also, had a manager who would describe every situation with a war analogy. Sorry Bob, this is Finance, we’re not literally killing each other. Take it down a notch.

MVP - as in “minimum viable product”

More commonly known as the slop of a product or solution that’s being slinged to all the markets early on without adequate documentation, support, usability, scalability, standards or security.

“Corner the market” also deserves a disgusting mention.

Touch base

"We're family"

I still hate "leverage" used as a synonym for "use." "We leverage technologies" yeah sure, when was the last time you had your asshole leveraged?

Here at Lemmy, we are steadfastly committed to leveraging our core competencies in order to drive strategic alignment across all functional units. Our focus remains unwavering on fostering a culture of continuous innovation and optimizing synergies that propel us towards achieving scalable growth and value creation for our stakeholders. By embracing agile methodologies and harnessing cutting-edge technologies, we endeavor to stay ahead of the curve, ensuring robust ROI while maintaining unparalleled customer-centricity in every facet of our operations.

Should you have any further inquiries or require additional insights into our visionary pursuits, please do not hesitate to connect with us. Together, let’s pioneer new paradigms and redefine excellence!

Streamline

For me its more of a lack of understanding of a specific word's definition. The word? "Systematically"

"There's a problem systematically, so IT is gonna have to look at that."

They literally mean there is a problem with a computer or software and not anything related to a systematic process.

This drives me right up the wall. Everyone in management says it like a buzzword.

I don't mind lunch and learns. I get overtime for that, AND they buy me lunch. I'm either stuck near the office for an unproductive hour I don't get paid for, or at my desk working on the same shit I was earlier for an extra hour.

But all the bullshit buzzwords attempting to paint employees standing up for themselves as bad things are obnoxious as hell: quiet quitting and the like

"Lean and nimble"

"Moving with a sense of purpose"

"We're like a family"

"Synergy"

'contextual knowledge'

this gem was put forward in all seriousness when the data didn't support the claims in the report: "it's not in the numbers, but we have a pretty good sense that this is true"

Collaboration. I have never worked at a single company that wanted people talking or collaborating on the work floor, or even when sharing a cubicle, let alone listen to any suggestion us peons had to offer. They keep using it as an excuse for RTO.

"double click" to mean "focus on" or "explore in more depth"

"Opportunities" when talking about shitty metrics.

Any mention of "family" and I'm out. You aren't my fucking family. I barely tolerate any of you, and I only go that far because I am forced to participate in this bullshit just so I can feed and shelter myself. Just give me my project, shut your dick sheath, and let me grind my life away in silence.

On a totally unrelated note, "team player".

Please socialise the requirement throughout your teams

when they give thier non-apology apologies.

Let's take it offline

"It doesn't scale", meaning the company might have to (shudder) hire people if our business doubles.

not really corporate, but (as far as i know) it was brought into existence due to corporations: "unalive"

Ideate
Ask (noun)
Table (verb)

Does “tabling” mean putting a subject on the table or taking it off?

"pAiN pOiNtS"

these are not knots in muscles they are severe institutional shortcomings and failings that are draining us all, making us want to jump ship, hazardous, and in some cases even making the company lose profit but you fuckheads just want to write down pAiN pOiNtS and jerk yourselves and the shareholders off instead of actually doing ANYTHING MEANINGFUL

“You don’t have a sense of urgency to get things done”. I usually get this when I’m going crazy to get things done so my status reports and presentations suffer. I understand paperwork is necessary, but can’t you at least say that rather than claiming I’m not getting things done. Meanwhile they’re satisfied with my sends of urgency to get things done if I just ignore my work and pamper them with status reports and PowerPoints.

This isn't strictly corpo-speak, but upper mgmt type people do this a lot:
Misuse of the word "myself." Like, "if you have any questions, talk to Joe or myself."
Nice one dumb-ass--you tried to sound smarter by adding syllables but it didn't work, did it!

Actionable. Ugh.

Effectuate

I'm going to effectuate this pole right up the ass of the next person to use that word.

I can’t read this shit on the weekend you guys are killing me :p

Growth.

People saying something needs to be flushed out when they really want it fleshed out.

One company I worked for decided it was a good idea to name a bunch of firings due to performance "Project Panda" 🤦

Place I worked at some time ago made a big speech and unveiled the following company motto to a lot of confused faces: "Engagement makes awareness sustainable."

Holistic
Double Click
Table Stakes
Jump Ball
Blocking & Tackling

The Q3 numbers have a life of their own. Growing, shrinking, zig zagging all over the place. Pushing needles, pulling levers. And fyi, the roi is tbd. high five synergy!

Let's circle back.

AI

"Good catch!"

Usually said when you bring up something that needs fixing, and said as a way to puff you up and not actually follow up on the problem.

bandwidth
massage
ping

Yesterday I aligned with Harold from the CD team on how to pull the data off their SI table, and so today I'm going to work on validating that data. I'll probably be done by tomorrow

Wow, lots of “double clicks”, which is fairly new to the usual list.

Any talk of "we" from the boss really means "you". It's exceptionally maddening when the boss is already a POS who has an A+ for delegation but F- for teamwork and care factor.

Ping: emailing someone

Revert: emailing someone

[Topic] came up on diary: I'm emailing someone

Signs you work in a bullshit email job.

"It is what it is".

Flywheel. Stop.

Strategy.

No, your half-baked, half-plan you stole from an intern, is not only not good, the last guy tried it and we are still trying to fix that mess.

I’m not sure if it really counts as a buzzword though.

“Cross-pollinate”

“Learnings” - you’re not fucking Borat!

Lessons learned

The term "let's slow time this" was used for a while. I can only assume that was some corporate phrase.

Mitigation

I had a manager who at the end of every meeting (and I mean EVERY meeting) said "go team!" It was especially annoying since he wasn't actually present in 99.9% of those meetings.

I don't have a problem with the words - I have a problem with them getting appropriated and destroyed by corporates.

Collaborator instead of employee. That's a usage that has spread through every company in French. It's infuriating how it.she just plain lying.

My current bugbear is "guesswork," although in my case this is in the context of the marketing bumf that my vendors and manufacturers slather their products in.

Apparently in the corporate world, the only purpose of guesswork is to "take it out of" things. Take the guesswork out of this, take the guesswork out of that. It seems at this point you are guaranteed that any time "guesswork" appears in a sentence it's going to be preceeded or followed by it being taken out of something, as surely as U always follows Q.

Once you notice the pattern (it doesn't take you long if you're sitting in my seat) the lack of originality becomes deeply irritating.