Managment speak

edited September 2009 in Chit chat
The top 10 spam thread inspired me to start this one, your all time favourite managment speak phrases. :-)Ill start with mine and also provide a concise translation for those of you who have never sat through a comunication hour or power point presentation. As i hadnt until three years ago.

Here goes

"Stepping out of your cumfort zone"

This basicaly means that your boss or managment want you to take on extra tasks for wich you have absolutley no training and is to be found nowhere in your job discription. For doing this you will receive no extra pay but it may help when pay review time comes around. The tasks given will usualy be lower managment type tasks, but it works out much more cost effective to get a lower payed member of staff to do. This will also free up managment time to develope even more riveting power point presentations and flow charts.

It can also be linked in with "employee led learning/development" and this basicly means your on your own kiddo,suck it in and be a team player.:smile:
Post edited by 1980-20.. on
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Comments

  • edited September 2009
    When I worked for Pearsons plc, all the managment phrases were "Teamwork, Communication and Smile" . I knew it was time to leave, and within six months I was made redundancy that was back in 1989!
  • edited September 2009
    Many years ago, for the first time in a meeting, I heard 'lets fly this up the flagpole & see who salutes it'

    Myself & my manager spend many hours laughing at that - to the point where we dared each other to come up with something better in a meeting.

    I won, and got a verbal warning with...

    'lets throw this whore on her back and see who f**ks her'

    PS - the same guy that came up with it also turned up to a meeting late and apologised because he was busy clearing the snow off his managers windscreen. His manager looked really embarrassed as he had no idea lol.
    My test signature
  • edited September 2009
    "multi-skilling"

    This means firing half your workforce and getting the other half to do two jobs for the same money. They will do this because they are scared of losing their jobs after you just fired half the workforce.

    There should be a word for what BA did as well, but I can't think of one right now.
  • edited September 2009
    fogartylee wrote: »
    PS - the same guy that came up with it also turned up to a meeting late and apologised because he was busy clearing the snow off his managers windscreen. His manager looked really embarrassed as he had no idea lol.

    It wasn't the snow clearing that held him up, it was clearing the brown stuff off his tongue that did it.
  • edited September 2009
    Anything with "synergise" in it. Or even worse, "monetize". And "paradigm" is vastly overused. I want to make a brand of crisps called "Paradigms".

    We used to have fun in serious meetings (during audits in the main) seeing if we could work in certain words, such as "aardvark".
  • edited September 2009
    "keep up the friendliness!"

    There's even a bar graph in the break room showing the profit margins for our store, not based upon quarterly sales but based upon friendliness? Complete inane insanity!

    How the hell can you measure friendliness, and more to the point with the misrable sods I work with how the hell can we be making quota for profit sharing (which incidentally being the last quarter of the year I bet drops just below the target line, so us grunts don't get our cut)? They walk around the place with faces like smacked arses and do the best to avoid customers, not help them. Although I'll admit I never approach a customer and ask "Do you need any help?" I hate it when people do that to me, ever since I was a kid I've always interpreted "Do you need any help" as "I'm watching you, so don't think about nicking anything!".

    If I need a member of staff to help me when I'm out and about shopping I'll bloody well approach them and ask for help.
    Every night is curry night!
  • edited September 2009
    I was reading in thr paper today that a woman was fired because she kept sending all her emails in capitals.
  • edited September 2009
    The oil companies endless preaching about "Safety first".

    My experience is that all it leads to, is the employees competing in reporting small and unsignificant issues, and each other, just to get a smiley on their record.

    We all know that it should rather be: "Money talks".
  • edited September 2009
    Team Building! That was the sessions where we were supposed to work togeather and support each other, how was this achieved? By splitting us into teams to compete AGAINST each other. But then again our Manager was a Moron. What I used to hate were the pointless morning meetings where the same things were discussed nearly every day and the coping strategy for the coming day was always the same as the day before. I had said many times that we were wasting 1 hour a day in these meetings, where nearly everyone went into standby mode and no-one was listening, but of course they were beyond hearing at that stage. One day I slipped in " I have extremely large testicles " into a point I was making and no-one even blinked out of the 20 or so staff, both men & women !
  • edited September 2009
    A machine translation dictionary would be a big help:
    [b]Mangement Speak     Actual Meaning[/b]
    have fun            don't complain
    
  • edited September 2009
    Some from a schoolteachers point of view;

    Learning walks = coming into your classroom unannounced and checking up whether your behaviour management is up to scratch

    Widening of the curriculum = introducing piss easy vocational courses which are coursework based to increase the pass rate to make managers look good

    Independent learning = not writing the coursework for the kids
  • edited September 2009
    At my place of employ I am a Communications Champion

    I 'Rollout' and 'Deliver' stuff (what I don't know)

    this is incredibly 'employee led training'
  • edited September 2009
    We tend to use words like 'issues' and 'contingency'.
    I wanna tell you a story 'bout a woman I know...
  • edited September 2009
    When commands come down from on high, we don't do them we 'Action' them.
  • jpjp
    edited September 2009
    The previous mantra "red, rock solid, restless" has been replaced, but I can't remember what with.
  • edited September 2009
    In a brain storming session you'll often hear "We must think outside the box", this old chestnut means wer'e out of ideas so we must start grasping at straws.
    Calling all ASCII Art Architects Visit the WOS Wall of Text and contribute: https://www.yourworldoftext.com/wos
  • edited September 2009
    "We have a can-do culture": Stop complaining about how stupid my idea is, and just do what I tell you.
  • edited September 2009
    Tut tut mr Scottie uk we no longer use the phrase "brainstorming".

    Not sure what its been replaced with though.
  • jpjp
    edited September 2009
    1980-20.. wrote: »
    Tut tut mr Scottie uk we no longer use the phrase "brainstorming".

    Not sure what its been replaced with though.

    mind mapping
  • edited September 2009
    Scottie_uk wrote: »
    In a brain storming session you'll often hear "We must think outside the box", this old chestnut means wer'e out of ideas so we must start grasping at straws.

    There are 3 kinds of people: -

    Those that think inside the box
    Those that think outside the box
    Those that are not even aware there is a box...
  • edited September 2009
    1980-20.. wrote: »
    Tut tut mr Scottie uk we no longer use the phrase "brainstorming".

    Not sure what its been replaced with though.

    Because we might offend elpileptics, I know. :mad:


    I am a former epileptic and personally I'm offended that someone might think I was offended by the term Brain Storming which is not at all offencive to elpileptics.

    If someone ever did complain they were just rocking the boat.
    Calling all ASCII Art Architects Visit the WOS Wall of Text and contribute: https://www.yourworldoftext.com/wos
  • edited September 2009
    Brighten up dull office meetings with a game of Wank Words Bingo!
  • edited September 2009
    The one word that I really hate seeing used is drive. I see it all the bloody time at work...."lets really drive those sales", "really drive customers into store" etc. It really drives me mad and yes, I did use that word intentionally (as it should be used!). When I was at HMV we were given a booklet detailing all that years plans (in a simplified form) and they had used the word drive 27 times over it's 8 pages and it was only a pocket sized book!

    I also hate shops that call their staff store collegues or assosiate team members. There blody sales assistants and that's it! (I'm a stockfile controller myself :-P ).
  • edited September 2009
    working for the NHS, we now have to call patients 'service users'.

    we pretty much work in accronyms all the time so it can get pretty confusing but it saves loads of time.

    imagine answering the phone and saying 'hello, south west yorkshire mental health trust' everyday. it'd drive you mad. so when dealing with them people just say swimit.
  • edited September 2009
    mile wrote: »
    working for the NHS, we now have to call patients 'service users'.

    we pretty much work in accronyms all the time so it can get pretty confusing but it saves loads of time.

    imagine answering the phone and saying 'hello, south west yorkshire mental health trust' everyday. it'd drive you mad. so when dealing with them people just say swimit.

    Surely swimhut would make more sence.

    "Hello I'm Mile and welcome to swim hut"
    Calling all ASCII Art Architects Visit the WOS Wall of Text and contribute: https://www.yourworldoftext.com/wos
  • zx1zx1
    edited September 2009
    The one my work uses now is 'Think Customer'. When i think i am me. Why would i want to think i'm someone else?:-P
    Another one they use if they are 'Changing the game'. I haven't seen anying change, and the telecoms industry is not a 'game'.
    The trouble with tribbles is.......
  • edited September 2009
    One of my pet peeves is "Lets bust it out!", sounds like the boss is suggesting a massive group wank or something instead of trying to motivate you into getting the job done.....ergh! :evil:
    Every night is curry night!
  • edited September 2009
    Leverage!

    the worlds worst word.
  • edited September 2009
    deligation

    or in normal speak

    s**t flow downhill and I can't arsed to do it myself

    My wife is a lecturer and they teach people to value individualty and diversity. Except that she's been asked to tone down her pink hair and cover her tattoos up.
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