Have you looked under the bonnet recently? Plucked some low-hanging fruit?No, neither have we. But we’ve sat in offsite business meetings cringing when management has asked us to.
Business clichés can make it hard for workers to grasp the essence of a company and really feel part of it. In fact, a recent Crowne Plaza® Hotels & Resorts study revealed that people consider office jargon or buzzwords to be a significant meeting annoyance.
And on business trips, where the whole team may be in each other’s company 24/7, that jargon can grate even more. For everybody’s sanity, how about suggesting a jargon-free work trip where people just say what they mean?
In the meantime, we reached out to a cross-section of business workers and invited them to vote for their most-hated office jargon. If you can bear it, here are their top 5. See how many you know...
1. Reach out
The clear winner in our survey! Instead of simply phoning, emailing or messaging, we’re endlessly encouraged to ‘reach out’, as in ‘please reach out to us with your ideas’.
2. Idea shower
We liked ‘brainstorming’ because it made us feel like mad professors; we loved ‘blue sky thinking’ as it sounded creative. New for 2018 comes ‘idea shower’ to mean coming up with a shower of ideas with colleagues.
3. Helicopter view
In an age of Ultra HD camera drone technology, this 2018 expression seems a little quaint, rather like putting on that record above. Listen out for ‘drone view’ in 2019. You read it here first.
4. Wireside chat
Two or more people talking to each other on Skype. Sounds like it should resemble a cosy fireside chinwag with a close friend and hopefully could be, if it wasn’t for the pun.
5. Hit the ground running
This supposedly means ‘get off to a brisk and successful start’ and is intended be inspiring. And let’s be honest - it has been around for too long, so let’s just retire this in 2019.
So there you go, some old, some new.
Ironically, in the Crowne Plaza study about meeting woes it would appear that it is the ‘old favourite’ jargon nuggets that are still overused in 2018, rather than anything new or original.
In their top 10, we found such chestnuts as a win-win situation (nearly always guaranteed to involve some losing), getting back to the drawing board (we do live in a digital world now) and too many sports analogies - see getting the ball rolling and moving the goalposts.
Maybe 2019 should represent a jargon-free workplace and meeting room?
At Crowne Plaza, we empower business productivity by providing a premium hotel experience to helps guests.
To find out more about how Crowne Plaza is changing the face of modern business travel or to book a room, visit crowneplaza.com/businessmostly.