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Most Annoying Business Jargon
Most Annoying Business Jargon
by 
We’ve all been at those meetings: They start out as simple affairs to touch base, circle the wagons and get people working on the same page. Instead, the low-hanging fruit gets ignored and the needle moves nowhere. All of which hinders the troops from becoming the kind of game-changing paradigm-shifters that companies need to take things to the next level. If any of that made any sense to you then clearly you’ve fallen under the poisonous spell of business jargon. To save you from yourself, here are 45 words and expressions to avoid. Also vote in our Jargon Madness bracket–think the NCAA basketball tourney for gobbledygook.
Core Competency
This awful expression refers to a firm’s or a person’s fundamental strength—even though that’s not what the word “competent” means. “This bothers me because it is just a silly phrase when you think about it,” says Bruce Barry, professor of management at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Business. “Do people talk about peripheral competency? Being competent is not the standard we’re seeking. It’s like core mediocrity.”
Buy In
Agreement on a course of action, if the most disingenuous kind. Notes David Logan, professor of management and organization at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business: “Asking for someone’s ‘buy-in’ says, ‘I have an idea. I didn’t involve you because I didn’t value you enough to discuss it with you. I want you to embrace it as if you were in on it from the beginning, because that would make me feel really good.’”
S.W.A.T. Team
In the armed forces, this term refers to teams of tremendously fit men and women who put themselves in danger on a regular basis for the betterment of society. In business, it means a group of “experts” (often fat guys in suits) assembled to solve a problem or tackle an opportunity. An apt comparison, if you’re a fat guy in a suit.
