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Monday, June 25, 2012

Jargon gibberish: just say what you mean | HRM Online

According to this blog, your possible use of  business jargon may happen because of these reasons:
Insecurity: ... people think certain phrases and words make them sound knowledgeable.

Lazy thinking: ... people have not thought through the ideas, so they dress up incomplete thinking with all kinds of blah blahblah.
Fear: People are afraid to explain the facts, especially in touchy situations like redundancies. They think that if they couch things in obscure explanations, people won’t get upset or ask difficult questions. ...
The blogger goes on to list some of the worst offenders, according to Forbes:
Core competency
This expression refers to a firm’s or a person’s fundamental strength—even though that’s not what the word “competent” means. ...
Empower
This is what someone above your pay grade does when, apparently, they would like you to do a job of some importance. ...
Open the kimono ...
Lots of moving parts ...
Scalable
A scalable business or activity refers to one that requires little additional effort or cost for each additional unit of output. ...

Think outside the box
This tired turn of phrase means to approach a business problem in an unconventional fashion. Kudos to one reader who suggested: “Forget the box, just think.”
Leverage ...
‘Leverage’ is mercilessly used [as a verb] to describe how a situation or environment can be manipulated or controlled. ...
Vertical ...
Robust
This otherwise harmless adjective has come to suggest a product or service with a virtually endless capacity to please. ...
Learnings ...
Whatever happened to simply saying: “I learned a lesson from that project?” ...
Impact ...
A tip: “Affect” is most commonly a verb, “effect” a noun. For instance: When you affect my thinking, you may have an effect on my actions.
Giving 110%
The nice thing about effort, in terms of measuring it, is that the most you can give is everything—and everything equals 100%. You can’t give more than that ....
Take it to the next level
In theory this means to make something better. In practice, it means nothing ....

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