If you’ve ever caught yourself uttering phrases like “I’ll keep you in the loop”, or “Let’s run it up the flagpole and see who salutes,” you need to put your use of buzzwords on a low-carb diet.
In a poll of senior executives from the nation’s 1,000 largest companies, executives were asked, “What is the most annoying or overused phrase or buzzword in the workplace today?” Here are their responses.
• “At the end of the day”
•“Solution”
•“Thinking outside the box”
•“Synergy”
•“Paradigm”
•“Metrics”
•“Take it offline”
•“Redeployed people”
•“On the runway”
•“Win-win”
•“Value-added”
•“Get on the same page”
•“Customer centric”
•“Generation X”
•“Accountability management”
•“Core competency”
•“Alignment”
•“Incremental”
Here are a few more that make me run for the exit:
•“Best-in-class”
•“Best of Breed”
•“Offload”
•“Seamless”
•“Ramp up”
•“Mission-critical”
•“Scalable”
•“Bleeding edge”
•“Frictionless”
•“World Class” (fill in the blank)
If you need a dictionary to decipher the jargon in your life, click over to John Walston’s site, BuzzWhack. Walston’s site uses good-natured humor to skewer the “companies and individuals who use buzzwords to "impress" and befuddle the rest of us.
The complete article on the poll results can be found at http://www.accountemps.com/PressRoom?inTrack=pressRoom.