Trouble Synthesizing Corporate Speak? Try This Business Jargon-to-English Dictionary
Spend much time in corporate America and you're likely to encounter any number of mind-numbing terms that require some translation. The first few times I heard "boil the ocean," for example, I had no idea what it was supposed to imply. And based on the way I heard it used in a meeting last week, I get the impression that there are people out there who used their own imagination to guess what it means -- and guessed badly. Boiling the ocean is never intended to be a good thing, folks.
If you work in a company with its own peculiar lexicon, perhaps you'll want to bookmark Unsuck It, a site that defines a few hundred corporate-speak terms. Some are somewhat obvious:
Stop-gap = temporary solutionSome are a bit opaque:Vertical = industry
Webinar = Web conference
Accelerated Emergence of High Maturity Behaviors = faster resultsAnd some are bizarre bastardizations of the English language which have no right to exist:In-flight = active
Brandactional = marketingDoes your company lean a little too heavily on this sort of jargon? Sound off in the comments -- we'd love to share the joy (or pain) of your worst examples of corporate speak.Net-net = in summary
Solutioneering = thinking
