Whether you are a fan of NBC’s, The Office, or if you have actually spent time working in a corporate office environment, you are certainly aware of a special brand of language used by senior management types. I haven’t been working long but already I have come across multiple instances of "corporate-speak" mostly in reports or updates from the company president or the like. These are generally useful publications that communicate the direction of the company or evaluate the past. But they are so peppered with words like "leverage," "alignment," and "synergy" to lose almost any real meaning. They just sound like a generic corporate pattern in which you fill in the blanks with a few specifics like your product or company name.
I found a nice glossary of corporate-speak terminology that was worth a laugh. I was surprised how many of those terms I have heard or read in the last few months. Corporate culture is a funny thing. I am starting to think that the similarities between so many corporate entities (which is why this list is funny and true) must have a common origin. I just don’t know what that origin is.
This is a problem in all corporate cultures. While cleaning out some files the other day, I ran across a 10-year-ol Bingo game using our “health-industry” words (which I’m sure are very different from yours) that was handed out at an annual training conference to encourage people to pay attention. It simply was a grid of the usual “lingo”. As people listened to the speeches, they marked out the words until they had a bingo. I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or if they actually did it, but it was a hoot to see that we still use the same high-falutin’ twenty-dollar words to cover up the fact that we aren’t saying anything at all.
I’m pretty sure I can have a lengthy conversion with anyone here at work just using acronyms. The sad part is that I’m not joking.
Oh yeah, don’t get me started on acronyms. When I started here, I found a link on our intranet to the acronym glossary. Hundreds of acronyms are defined. The best part is when there are multiple meanings (like 3 or 4) for a single acronym.
Derek! The link doesn’t work! You and your broken links….and you call yourself a techie!