@ the coal face

I have worked in an office for the last 30 plus years. 

I should mention that it is a small office and I am in fact rarely there in person as my job involves a lot of driving out to appointments. 

Being sat at a desk rather than behind a steering wheel is such a rare occurrence that I really enjoy it and also the interaction and camaraderie of my fellow workers. We are a close, compact team and as we often comment, we spend more time in each others company than we do our own families. 

I can think of nothing worse therefore than a mega. open plan, Corporate office where the employees are in confrontation in their daily workloads and where politics and back-biting are a necessity to get ahead or to just maintain a position in an ancient hierarchical order. 

Such is the environment of the dreaded jargon and management speak where the main protagonists use it relentlessly to make their own jobs and roles more important and impressive than they actually are. 

Informed studies of this phenomena have attributed its widespread use as a means of disguising a poorly implemented job or to give the impression that the individual knows what they are doing but, the superficial hot air aside, do not. 

We have all been in meetings where management speak has made us cringe or confused in equal proportions. 

Here is a bit of a collection of those doing the rounds in a modern office surround. 

I have omitted to give an interpretation or translation of these as they are largely self explanatory, or if not, are just a fascinating insight into how those who have the luxury of many idle hours can funnel it into the production of bullshit. 

Helicopter View

Idea Shower

Touch base offline

Low hanging fruit

Look under the bonnet

Get all your ducks in a row

Don’t let the grass grow too long on this one

Not enough bandwidth

The strategic staircase

Run it up the flagpole

Put a record on and see who dances

Square the circle

Lifting the kimono

Product Evangelist

We need a holistic cradle to grave approach

Sprinkling our magic

From the get-go

We want 110%

Capture your colleagues

We are still optimistic that things will feed through the sales and delivery pipeline

My door is open on this issue

High altitude view

Wouldn’t want to wrongside the demographic

On a go forward basis

Can someone give me some colour on this post ?

I concur

Touch base

Circle up

Can you roll these changes through the model ?

If I could piggy back on what I was just saying

Maybe someone could just unpack that a little more

We must crank it up a bit

The only caveat is……….

At the end of the day

It is what it is

Talk to that point

Get our arms around that

We are in the business of creating synergies

Shift those graphs

Massage the red dots

Why don’t you go ahead and take a stab at that and get back to me ?

We will work through the night to get this to you first thing in the morning

Get a download

What’s the time line ?

Vanilla strategy

Apples to apples, apples to oranges

We have to drill down through the numbers

Deep dive

Do you have capacity to model this out to year 2329 ?

Who’s your Daddy

Lets not hammer a dead horse

Let’s not reinvent the wheel

Shoot me an e mail

So and so pinged me last night

Adding value

Pari passu

Ready. Fire, aim

Out of pocket

Shit flows downhill

Roadmap

Let’s huddle on this one

Ramp up

Net net

They shouldn’t be afraid to call a spade, a spade

We need to get this done PDQ

Lets grab the bull by its horns

Lets make the stars and the moon align

Keep your oar in the water

I think this would be a good exercise for you

Whats the game plan ?

Let’s take a 25,000 foot view

ETA’s

We need to noodle this a little

Something we can all aspire to

Take ownership

Be the bulldog

Circling the wagons

Too leveraged

There’s more grease left in this pig

On the same page

The interns are taking over

Lets gets some seamless

JFDI

We need to organise deliverables

Knowledge transfer

Identifying core competencies for holistic improvement

Transition phase

Restructuring initiative

Great thread

War room

Net worth or nothing

Cack me nimble

My question to you is…….

Don’t spin your wheels

The meat and potatoes of the matter

Senior exposure

Gin up on the model

Step it up now boys and girls

Don’t be afraid to push back if you’re feeling overloaded

Just the tip

Does that make sense

No worries, let’s update and get it out to the group

Pls, asap, thx

Feel free to reach out to me

Epic fail or Epic win

Smilin’ and dialin’

Does this thing have legs ?

Talk the talk

Turn into a pumpkin

Pencils down

In the weeds

Just so you know where I’m coming from

Read the tea leaves

Wrapped around the axle

Can you arrange this data along swim lanes

Let’s put on our training hats for a minute

Drop fenders and come alongside

What’s the long pole in the tent

You’re fired

There are just so many that I didn't even have to mention about Blue Sky thinking or running things up a flagpole. 

Send me anymore that you may have via the comments section...................................