Notorious Corporate Jargon
Phrase↕ | What It Really Means↕ | Origin↕ | Usage Context↕ | Cringe Level↕ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Synergy | 1+1=3 when combining teams (it never does) | Biology, co-opted in 1970s M&A deals | M&A press releases, reorg memos | Maximum |
Low-hanging fruit | The easy wins you should have already done | Mid-20th century business usage | Quarterly planning, consultants | High |
Circle back | I don't have an answer, let's delay this | 1980s management speak | Meetings that go nowhere | High |
Blue-sky thinking | Make things up with no constraints | 1960s advertising | Off-sites and brainstorms | Very high |
Move the needle | Produce a measurable result | Dashboard metaphor, 1970s | Exec all-hands, OKR reviews | High |
Boil the ocean | Attempt something impossibly huge | Management consulting, 1960s | Scope-cutting discussions | Medium |
Take it offline | Stop bringing this up in front of everyone | Telecom / conference calls | Meetings with awkward topics | Medium |
Bandwidth | Time and energy (applied to humans) | Network engineering, 1990s | Saying no to extra work | High |
Drinking the Kool-Aid | Uncritically adopting company ideology | Jonestown massacre, 1978 | Cult-y company culture discussions | Very high (and dark) |
Boil the frog | Slowly acclimate people to a change | Apocryphal 19th century frog experiment | Change management, price hikes | Medium |
Eat our own dog food | Use the product we build | Microsoft engineers, 1988 | Product and QA teams | Medium |
Swim lanes | Who owns what responsibility | Process diagrams, 1990s | Cross-functional projects | High |
Open the kimono | Share sensitive information | 1980s US-Japan trade talks (now considered offensive) | Due diligence, partnership talks | Maximum (and problematic) |
Run it up the flagpole | Get approval from above | 1950s US military slang | Bureaucratic sign-off | High |
Touch base | Briefly check in | Baseball metaphor, 1910s | Weekly syncs, sales follow-ups | Medium |
Disrupt | Compete in an existing market | Clayton Christensen, 1997 | Every tech pitch deck since 2010 | Very high |
Pivot | Admit the original plan failed | Eric Ries, Lean Startup, 2011 | Startup post-mortems, VC updates | High |
Ping me | Send a message | Network ping command, 1983 | Slack and email | Medium |
Deep dive | Detailed investigation | Submarine / scuba, co-opted 1990s | Analysis presentations | Medium |
Leverage | Use (as a verb, misused) | Finance, corrupted into verb in 1980s | Strategy decks everywhere | High |
Reach out | Contact someone | Bell Telephone ad, 1979 | Sales outreach, recruiter emails | Medium |
Think outside the box | Be creative (ironically cliche) | 9-dot puzzle, 1970s consultants | Innovation workshops | Very high |
Win-win | Both parties benefit (usually neither) | Stephen Covey, 7 Habits, 1989 | Negotiation, partnership talks | Medium |
Skin in the game | Personal investment in outcome | Warren Buffett, 1980s | Performance reviews, VC pitches | Medium |
North Star metric | One number that defines success | Growth hacking, 2010s | Startup product strategy | High |
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