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Old 04-04-2014, 07:32 PM   #41
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Paradigm shift
Get our ducks in a row
Eat your own dogfood
Excellance (yes, spelled wrong in a presentation on excellence)
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Old 04-04-2014, 07:43 PM   #42
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"Best practices" - my new supervisor uses this AT LEAST three times a day.

It drives us crazy, so we are seriously considering leveraging our spirit of teamwork and drilling down to the core mission of our organization to refocus our energy outside the box until we find a way to utilize our resources to their maximum output and resolve the problem.

Translation: we frequently daydream about "leveraging" said supervisor off the nearest bridge.
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Old 04-04-2014, 07:48 PM   #43
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Very funny and you all covered a lot of them. Seems the bigger the company the more buzzwords we have. Here's a few:

1. Modalities (one VP started, others picked up) This is not a business term I've ever heard. Crossword puzzle maybe. It was used in place of Business Units under Divisions.

2. Nexus

3. Lessons Learned (Ok, I must confess, sometimes for fun, I start using a word/phrase and see if it catches on. This lasted almost 3 years, slides, etc.) Reason I did it? Was assigned a project that I knew would be a disaster so we didn't fail we learned lessons.

3. PMP = Performance Management Program, has objectives, like MBO's.

4. Behavior Modification (really, good luck)

5. Strategic Planner Meetings, nothing strategic here, I made a spreadsheet up in 2007 to list tasks people were working on. Just gave it that name to make it sound important.

There's more, but also seems I'm a culprit to, but it's a game for me.
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Old 04-04-2014, 07:50 PM   #44
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"utilize"..........that sucker is all over the place anymore. Doesn't anyone just USE stuff anymore?
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Old 04-04-2014, 07:53 PM   #45
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I hate it when people use the word "like" many times in a series of sentences, as: "like I was going to the store to like buy some aspirin.
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Old 04-04-2014, 08:00 PM   #46
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I hate it when people use the word "like" many times in a series of sentences, as: "like I was going to the store to like buy some aspirin.
You left out the uhs. ("Uhh, like I was uhh, going to the store to uhh, like buy...).
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Old 04-04-2014, 08:06 PM   #47
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1) 110%
2) "learnings" as a noun

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Old 04-04-2014, 08:09 PM   #48
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'You're a chicken you can't speak, only pigs can speak in this meeting'.

'It's a stand up, don't sit down. This will be over in ten minutes'..... hour later they're still talking.
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Old 04-04-2014, 08:10 PM   #49
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Socialize...." Document is ready to be socialized"
Hall pass...." I'll give you a hall pass on that" (as in... let me slide)

Ones I like ... see above "let me slide"
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Old 04-04-2014, 08:23 PM   #50
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One annoying one from my working days was the overuse of the term, "empowerment."

On the plus side, a favorite one I liked to use was the phrase, "in the galaxy" which referred to some data my staff was reviewing as being within the range of possibility or reasonableness.
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Old 04-04-2014, 08:29 PM   #51
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Silver View Post
This is more of a syntax issue than a buzzword, but it annoys me when I hear people starting out a sentence with "So....." almost as of they were telling a story.

"So.....I just got my car detailed."
"So.....how is your new job?"
"So.....I hear your house sold."
"So.....what are you doing this week-end?"


So....what is with that? I find it annoying.
There was a LOT of follow up on the use of 'so' in this thread. Funny, I had noticed that in the Science Friday podcasts (mentioned in the linked article). It seems that these really smart people did a lot of "so..." to explain things. It didn't really bug me, but it happened enough to make me notice, and I did think they were trying to frame it as a story ("So the next thing we thought of was...." "So if you want to go to Mars....", "So when these two chemicals combine...).

Not so much a buzzword, but I HATE it when people use the word "literally" when they describe something figuratively.

Co-worker, returning from lunch: "We literally starved to death waiting for the waiter to bring our lunch."

Me: "Oh, can I have your stapler then?"

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Old 04-05-2014, 08:12 AM   #52
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I agree that few people ask how you're doing because they really care about you and what you're doing. What some seem to be looking for is:

1) Oh, hah, you have really boring weekends, a really boring life, and you've just proved it to me. Now I can feel superior to you, whereas before, I was a little worried because you seem smart and cool.

2) I had a cool weekend, but it's not cool to just launch in and start bragging about it; to be polite, I'm going to let you go first.

I'm interested in parents' kid stories. Some of them are really funny.

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This one's always annoyed me, because nobody really cares. None of my coworkers care what I did over the weekend, any more than I care what they did.

!
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Old 04-05-2014, 08:16 AM   #53
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Eat your own dogfood
That, and "self-licking ice cream cone" are two common phrases I find revolting. Still, the ice cream cone analogy is at least useful. AFAIK, Standard English doesn't have a good idiom for "something perpetuated for the sole purpose of perpetuating it." (If one exists, someone here will surely provide it).

I had to have the dogfood one explained to me, and never could understand why "use your own products" wasn't good enough.

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Old 04-05-2014, 08:21 AM   #54
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Originally Posted by Amethyst View Post
That, and "self-licking ice cream cone" are two common phrases I find revolting. Still, the ice cream cone analogy is at least useful. AFAIK, Standard English doesn't have a good idiom for "something perpetuated for the sole purpose of perpetuating it." (If one exists, someone here will surely provide it).
"Famous for being famous"? Like Paris Hilton.

Quote:
I had to have the dogfood one explained to me, and never could understand why "use your own products" wasn't good enough.

Amethyst
I get the intent, but it makes no sense to me unless you are a dog who makes dogfood. Dog food is made for dogs, not humans. Why would we eat it? "Eat your own cooking", or "you made your bed, now sleep in it" would make more sense.

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Old 04-05-2014, 08:37 AM   #55
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Reach out
I had a discussion with a fellow about doing some business. I called him 3 times and each time he closed the conversation with "thanks for reaching out." Decided I wasn't going to be able to stand that even one more time.
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Old 04-05-2014, 10:04 AM   #56
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"Governance"

"within the Enterprise"

Sorry, I'm an engineer but not a trekkie.
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Old 04-05-2014, 10:46 AM   #57
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I just remembered one more: Heavy Lifting

Supervisor: "Your department will need to do the heavy lifting with '_____' process for awhile because X department has so many vacancies"

Usually that temporary "heavy lifting" became the permanent expectation.
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Old 04-05-2014, 11:07 AM   #58
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In thinking about it more, I did recall some phrases where I work that I've heard multiple times:

"unicorn" - Some product feature or ability somebody wants that's unattainable.

"move the needle" - As in to move forward in reaching some goal, usually a deadline or a sales number.

Re: "self licking ice cream cone" - LOL, I've never heard that one before. I might have to start using that one at work and see if I can start a trend.
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Old 04-05-2014, 12:01 PM   #59
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"I'm sorry, can you repeat the question?"

Repeated hundreds of times during teleconferences over the years by people clearly multi-tasking instead of actually paying attention, always preceded by a long silence as they hurried to get their phones off of mute.

"Multi tasking" would be another. It doesn't exist. Period.
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Old 04-05-2014, 02:10 PM   #60
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Dogfood

Quote:
Originally Posted by Amethyst View Post
That, and "self-licking ice cream cone" are two common phrases I find revolting. Still, the ice cream cone analogy is at least useful. AFAIK, Standard English doesn't have a good idiom for "something perpetuated for the sole purpose of perpetuating it." (If one exists, someone here will surely provide it).

I had to have the dogfood one explained to me, and never could understand why "use your own products" wasn't good enough.

Amethyst
The explanation I heard for the "dogfood" was that it came from IAMS, which was a local business.
"How can we ask others to buy our stuff if we aren't buying it?"
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