Over many years of conversing with contractors, end clients and agencies, we have witnessed, beheld and have heard horror stories of some of the most painful examples of management garbage that would make even David Brent squirm.
To vent our frustration of such language, we have compiled our top 10 of management bulls**t…
Please feel free to add to our list:
"Let’s helicopter this around the room and see where it lands"
(Nothing screams mid-life crises like a helicopter reference)
"We’re your one-stop-shop for face-to-face business"
(I’m sure this person sold me a dodgy car once…)
"I’m just circling back to you on this"
(So you want me to do the talking)
"Make sure you don’t push any pianos on this one"
(Errm, okay?)
"Let’s get into the thought Jacuzzi, and see what ideas bubble to the surface"
(No, let’s not)
"What we need here is a harmonised business process landscape"
(The words of somebody who clearly has no idea what they are talking about)
"We need to get some thought grenades out of this meeting"
(With phrases like that, some real grenades wouldn’t do a miss)
"Let’s do some Imagineering on this one"
(The only person who got away with using the word ‘Imagineering’ was Walt Disney)
"I think we should Blue-Sky it"
(Nothing says wannabe hipster like ‘Blue-Skying’ at the beginning of a meeting)
"Time to put our marketing hats on"
(Regardless of how much we would like to, we do not work in Santa’s grotto)
We used to purposefully drop cringe-worthy responses in at meetings and record if management re-used them. Examples are: “We feel this process requires further robustification….” & “We have come up with some excellent ideas, lets go away and solutionize them…”
I have to say I haven’t heard a single one of these ever used verbatim. Helicopter view or blue sky thinking but certainly not the way these are phrased? They been lifted out of an American article or just made up? I would say from a solutions perspective we are clearly in a left-hand right-hand situation 😉
Heard by a consultant from a certain “Big 5” consultancy answer his mobile with this vomit-inducing comment…… “How can I make you successful today?” I drank more than a normal amount of wine that night trying to wipe my mind clean…….
[quote name=”Sue Anslow”]I drank more than a normal amount of wine that night trying to wipe my mind clean…….[/quote]
A just remedy. When I am on the receiving end of such gaudy conversation however, I’ve been told to imagine the other person naked.. It never helps.