Overused Business Gobbledygook words LinkedIn

LinkedIn Reveals the 10 Most Overused Job-Hunter Buzzwords

December 15, 2010 by Jolie O'Dell 299 

 

LinkedIn has just posted the 10 most overused, tired and trite buzzwords that get slapped onto resumes and professional profiles around the U.S. and 11 other countries.

According to our LinkedIn profiles, a great many of us tend to describe ourselves as motivated team players with extensive experience.

Ironically, “innovative” is the second-most clichéd word found in LinkedIn profiles. You’d think we’d be able to be more innovative with our vocabularies, no?

Sadly, those of you who took a more creative approach to describing yourselves have been penalized in the past as well. All the LinkedIn “ninjas” got called out earlier this year along with “evangelists” and “gurus” for using these rising menaces of career-oriented buzzwords.

Still, the most common words in LinkedIn profiles are less flashy and more conservative. We’re calling ourselves “motivated,” “results-oriented” and “problem solvers.” And this isn’t just in the U.S.; words like “motivated” and “dynamic” popped up as the most overused terms from Brazil to India.




Compelling descriptions, headlines and keywords are some of the most important aspects for job hunters to consider when creating and editing their LinkedIn profiles, and it’s one of the easiest aspects, too — much easier than getting a slew of recommendations or spending quality time on the site’s Q&A section.
In the comments, we’d love to get your tips and suggestions for finding and using better self-descriptors on LinkedIn, resumes and other professional networks. What unique terms do you use to describe yourself professionally?

Source: http://mashable.com/2010/12/14/linkedin-resume-buzzwords/

Banned words

Introducing the Islington English Dictionary and Liberal Phrasebook

By Ed West Politics Last updated: September 7th, 2010

Now that the print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is, alas, on its way out, now might be a good time to unveil my next writing project, the Islington English Dictionary and Liberal Phrasebook (liberal, of course, in the modern rather than classic phrase). Please feel free to suggest any commonly heard words and phrases, with a translation into English.

Anti-racism campaigner – Hamas supporter or other terrorist spokesman who’s so extreme he’s even banned from Saudi Arabia.

Charity - Body funded by the state through compulsory taxation, whose role is to lobby for more taxation.

Clients – Criminals (when described by members of the justice system).

Communities – Client groups.

Developing world – Parts of the globe which 40 years ago had the rule of law, secular government and an economy projected to match Europe within a generation; which are now ruled by medieval warlords, have a life expectancy of 50, and where rape is a capital offence – for the victim.

Diversity – Lots of middle-class people of various ethnic backgrounds who all went to the same schools, the same universities, watch the same programmes, read the same books and vote the same way.

Fairness – Tax.

Human rights – The right to have almost no possible limit on one’s personal gratification, whatever the reasoning and despite all commonly-agreed standards of natural justice.

Inappropriate – Something which is true but which it is impolite to mention in debate.

Justice – Socialism. Paying very well-off public sector employees to give other people’s money to those who feel in some way slighted or have some grievance, whether real or perceived. (See social justice, racial justice, climate justice, etc.)

Mumbai – The city that used to be called Bombay in English, before our culture became so riddled with self-hatred and imperialist guilt that we dare not even use transliterations of cities inhabited by former colonial subjects. (See Beijing. Don’t see München, Roma, Beograd, Warszawa.)

Peace campaigner – A humanitarian intent on getting himself, and his useful idiot friends from Europe, killed by taking on some commandos with blunt instruments.

Phobia – Scepticism of, disagreement with.

Poverty – Having less money than other people.

Resources – Taxpayer's money.

Vibrant – Has a high crime rate.

Victorian – The wacky idea that generational poverty might be linked to behavior and what was once called “morality”.

Vulnerable – Criminals, as in “society's most vulnerable”.

Xenophobe – Someone who believes in the nation-state.

Youths (French) – North Africans.

Source: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100052155/introducing-the-islington-english-dictionary-and-liberal-phrasebook/

Language change and banned words

Which words should be thrown out of the English language?

By Ed West Politics Last updated: August 23rd, 2011

In the news this week – experts at Collins Dictionary have compiled a list of words that have fallen out of use in the past half-century.

Among them are “wittol” – a man who tolerates his wife's unfaithfulness; “drysalter”, a dealer in certain chemical products and foods; and “alienism”, the study and treatment of mental illness.

While I think the English language can do without "succedaneum" or "woolfell", and words always come and go, what has been tragic is the way that some other words have been zombified, changed to something altogether different to their real meaning. And while this happens naturally in language – artificial, awful and nice, for instance, all once had completely different meanings – what’s different is that these changes were deliberately made, by institutions and individuals, with the aim of distorting the political discourse. As the saying goes, 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a manual.


Last year I wrote about words that had evolved completely different (and often contradictory) meanings, and which should officially be on the banned list, among them:

Clients – to mean criminals (when described by members of the justice system).

Diversity – Lots of middle-class people of various ethnic backgrounds who all went to the same schools, the same universities, watch the same programmes, read the same books and vote the same way.

Fairness – Tax.

Human rights – The right to have almost no possible limit on one’s personal gratification, whatever the reasoning and despite all commonly-agreed standards of natural justice.

Justice – More tax. (See social justice, racial justice, climate justice, etc.)

Vibrant – Scary and foreign.

Vulnerable – Criminals, as in “society’s most vulnerable”.


I’d add to these the following:

Gendered (or even gender, to mean sex).

Chair, as in a person rather than something a person sits on.

BCE

Global north/global south – I prefer Moe Szyslak's more honest definition: "one of those loser countries".

Dog-whistle. Except when applied, literally, to a dog whistle. Otherwise it means “I can’t actually argue with what you’re saying, so I’m going to argue with what I choose to interpret as what you’re saying”.

Any other suggestions for a banned list of words are welcome.

Source: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100101913/which-words-should-be-thrown-out-of-the-english-language/

New Business metaphors

Are you open to open kimonos?

Posted by Stan Carey on July 28, 2011

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The phrase open kimono was recently added to Macmillan’s Open Dictionary:

“when something such as a meeting is described as being ‘open kimono’, it means the participants share openly and keep no secrets”

A kimono is a traditional form of clothing in Japan that is wrapped around the body. It’s worn by women, men, and children. Given the widespread taboo over exposed genitals and even underwear, open kimono – often seen in the verb phrase open the kimono – is a vividly effective metaphor for conveying transparency and frankness.

It’s semantically similar to an open book, which refers to people, but open kimono refers to a way of dealing with information, especially sensitive information like strategic plans or financial data. It is consistent with how Diane Nicholls describes honesty in her article about its metaphors: “honesty is bare and open”, something I discuss further in this post.

Open kimono has become something of a buzzword in business English. I saw a couple of websites describe it as 1990s business jargon, and it appears in an unofficial Microsoft Lexicon from that time. It is now familiar enough to be used in headers by major newspapers such as The Financial Times and The Australian.

Sometimes what appears to be a new expression is in fact a considerably older one that has recently become popular. The Double-Tongued Dictionary found open the kimono in an article in Folklore Studies in 1959, referring to the sexual behaviour of a wolf. As long ago as 1979, it occurred in a more everyday context – a report in an American newspaper – in an amusingly extended metaphor:

We started four years ago with opening the kimono (budget book) and now we’re caught without our underwear.

Linguist Daniel Everett has stressed the importance of culture in language. I wonder whether the idiom arose from Japanese culture or from other people’s ideas of it. A post on Open Salon quotes a Japanese lecturer who thinks it might be related to a Japanese idiom meaning “to relax, speak and behave openly”.

Whatever its origin, open kimono is currently on a gradual and steady rise in English, as this Google Ngram shows. I have no strong feelings about the phrase, but I do find it quite comical, and if I heard it used in a corporate context I think it would be an open invitation to giggle.

Used recently in newspaper, The Australian: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/open-your-kimono-and-show-us-your-modelling/story-e6frgd0x-1226099303275

Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/are-you-open-to-open-kimonos

Spelling, online shopping, prestige

Spelling mistakes 'cost millions' in lost online sales

Comments (622)

By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent

14 July 2011 Last updated at 01:09 GMT

 

An online entrepreneur says that poor spelling is costing the UK millions of pounds in lost revenue for internet businesses.

Charles Duncombe says an analysis of website figures shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half.

Mr Duncombe says when recruiting staff he has been "shocked at the poor quality of written English".
Sales figures suggest misspellings put off consumers who could have concerns about a website's credibility, he says.

The concerns were echoed by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), whose head of education and skills warned that too many employers were having to invest in remedial literacy lessons for their staff.
Written word

Mr Duncombe, who runs travel, mobile phones and clothing websites, says that poor spelling is a serious problem for the online economy.

 

"Often these cutting-edge companies depend upon old-fashioned skills," says Mr Duncombe.

And he says that the struggle to recruit enough staff who can spell means that this sector of the economy is not as efficient as it might be.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics published last month showed internet sales in the UK running at £527m per week.

"I know that industry bemoaning the education system is nothing new but it is becoming more and more of a problem with more companies going online.

"This is because when you sell or communicate on the internet, 99% of the time it is done by the written word."

Mr Duncombe says that it is possible to identify the specific impact of a spelling mistake on sales.
He says he measured the revenue per visitor to the tightsplease.co.uk website and found that the revenue was twice as high after an error was corrected.

"If you project this across the whole of internet retail, then millions of pounds worth of business is probably being lost each week due to simple spelling mistakes," says Mr Duncombe, director of the Just Say Please group.

Spelling is important to the credibility of a website, he says. When there are underlying concerns about fraud and safety, then getting the basics right is essential.

"You get about six seconds to capture the attention on a website."

When recruiting school and university leavers, Mr Duncombe says too many applications have contained spelling mistakes or poor grammar.

"Some people even used text speak in their cover letter," he says.

Even among those who appeared to be able to spell, he says that a written test, without access to a computer spellchecker, revealed further problems with spelling.

William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, says that in some informal parts of the internet, such as Facebook, there is greater tolerance towards spelling and grammar.

"However, there are other aspects, such as a home page or commercial offering that are not among friends and which raise concerns over trust and credibility," said Professor Dutton.

"In these instances, when a consumer might be wary of spam or phishing efforts, a misspelt word could be a killer issue."

James Fothergill, the CBI's head of education and skills, said: "Our recent research shows that 42% of employers are not satisfied with the basic reading and writing skills of school and college leavers and almost half have had to invest in remedial training to get their staff's skills up to scratch.

"This situation is a real concern and the government must make the improvement of basic literacy and numeracy skills of all school and college leavers a top priority."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14130854

Why Plain English is better

Weaselly recognised

Posted by Stan Carey on June 01, 2011

Last week I wrote a parody of corporate communication as part of a competition for Macmillan Dictionary’s Business English month. Enjoyable as it was to write, I had even more fun reading the responses – readers’ translations of my imperfect storm of management buzzwords. The comments showed how naturally people see through (and play with) this kind of language, even when it borders on incomprehensibility.

It is satisfying to replace officialese and ‘corporatese’ with more direct and meaningful words, to use our creativity – whether mentally or in a more concrete way – to improve vague and inflated guff. But gobbledegook remains all too customary in business and politics, and the inexorable creep of commercialisation and politicisation means that it is apt to end up almost anywhere. It seems to spread partly by contagion; in all but the most careful speakers, passive exposure can lead to use.

Fortunately there are efforts in the other direction, promoting plain language. For example, President Obama recently signed into law the Plain Writing Act of 2010, which obliges federal agencies in the U.S. to use “clear Government communication that the public can understand and use”. In 2009, the Local Government Association in the UK listed 200 words and phrases to avoid. Although the LGA clearly meant well, some of the words it blacklisted were useful, and some of the alternatives it suggested were little or no improvement on the undesirable jargon.

My parody article obscured the act of firing people. This act can be a regrettable economic necessity during a prolonged credit crunch, but euphemising it with periphrasis and weasel words like rightsizing, downsizing, offshoring, strategic reorganisation, involuntary career realignment or decruitment implementation event doesn’t make anyone feel better about it. On the contrary: it demeans and irritates people. It pushes their irritation buttons.

Plain English is a frank and straightforward style that does not lend itself readily to expressing longwinded nonsense and hiding unpleasant facts. It is well suited to conveying meaning clearly and without guile, thereby showing a measure of respect for people’s intelligence, feelings, and capacity for dealing with difficult truths and situations – not “challengeful reality-based outcomes, going forward”. Our brains do a lot of hard work decoding language into sense; in business, it doesn’t pay to multiply this workload.

Source:

Out with gobbledygook, in with Plain English

Nails on a blackboard: legalese and management-speak

Posted by Briony Drimie on May 19, 2011

Business English month continues with a guest post on legal English and management-speak.

_________

My relationship with Business English began at university, where I studied Law. From legal summaries involving sentences that spanned over a hundred lines to words that I remain convinced were made up on the spot, the use of language depended entirely on which side of a case was argued. Legal language was my introduction to the fact that language could be less about clear communication and be more of an art form, clarifying or obfuscating points of law in order to sway an argument.

Despite being considered overly wordy, lawyers are very caught up in individual words, for the definition of a word, or indeed its absence in a sentence can be the pivotal point of a case. By example, one of the first cases students are taught is that of Adler v George. The law stated it was an offence to obstruct HM forces “in the vicinity” of a prohibited place. The defence argued that the defendant was innocent as he was “in” a prohibited place when he obstructed HM forces and not in the vicinity of it. The Judges didn’t agree but it goes to show how a case can hinge on a single word.

Legal language contains many phrases rooted in Latin that define specific legal concepts, such as mens rea or habeas corpus which have evolved as part of the legal process. These phrases don’t mean anything to many of us but they perform a necessary function within Law and are in their own way precisely defined. As such, I can easily tolerate their use in a professional context.

However, upon moving from Law to corporate business, I discovered that there was a vein of Business English I had been protected from: what we commonly know as management-speak, which I have loathed since I first heard it. It reached a head several months ago, when a man I’d never spoken with suggested that he “hit my imagination button”.

I have no issue with the use of metaphor in speech. However, within the business industry, usage seems to have spiralled out of control. Some management-speak phrases grate more than others: a friend of mine loathes “singing from the same hymn sheet” whilst I find “speaking with one voice” irritating. Equally, I find “going forward” problematic. Forward refers to distance and is inappropriate in referring to time. Particularly when phrases such as “in the future”, “from now on”, “soon”, “shortly” “imminently” and “at the earliest opportunity” are all viable alternatives.

A prevailing irritation is the curse of the noun-as-a-verb, leading to “transitioning into a new team” or “incentivating the workforce”. I find these nouns-as-verbs to be the linguistic equivalent of nails on a blackboard. These sentences are clunky and could be expressed in a cleaner way. For example, someone could “move” to a new team or “give” staff an incentive.

In an age when more of our business is conducted internationally and we have language barriers to cross, isn’t it time to promote Plain English?

Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/legalese-and-management-speak

Business gobbledygook + winning translation

Critical learnings, going forward

Posted by Stan Carey on May 25, 2011

Macmillan Dictionary Blog very much hopes this will hit your imagination button . Regular guest blogger Stan Carey presents you with a challenge this week. Below you will find a letter written to staff in ‘business-speak’. Your task is to ‘translate’ it into plain (but still Business) English and add your version as a comment below. Stan reckons you can sum it up in a couple of sentences … but that’s no fun. We’ll send the writer of our favourite ‘translation’ a Macmillan English Dictionary of their choice.

___________

Dear employee,

It has come to our attention that productivity drivers are suboptimal, which clearly impacts performance deliverables. We have touched base with HQ and undergone a period of extensive consultation. Actioning this decision-making process requires frontminding streamlined competencies. We anticipate a needs-based harmonisation gap in employee feelings vis-à-vis these necessary outcomes, but we are tasked with maximising the ball-parking of our projected equity outcomes.

Our architectural assets house a raft of measures towards the provision of key learnings for the upsizing of overall skill sets. These operation-centric initiatives push stakeholders’ imagination buttons by crystal balling their high-level ROI expectations. The ensuing agreeance modules accelerate in the core bump space facilities, including food consumption areas, which allows human-sensitive package expansion and back-ended value development. However, executive brainstorming processes suggest that licking the employee envelope has functionality limits.

In short, synergistic knowledgings inputted clear indicators of off-message dialoguing exchanges in semi-salaried discussants’ cooler-based mutual interfacings. In the light of a data-driven assessment, we have scoped the conclusion that these non-centre locality behaviours undermine our company’s alpha potential when factoring in our enhanced string-paradigm alignment to the green growth environment via the meaningful actualisation of our industry-topping integrity footprint.

Therefore our dedication to escalating our core endeavours through transparently iterated evaluative methodologies that represent best practice in emergent collaborative counter-engineering necessitates a decruitment implementation event. This involves non-pensionable productivity management parameters through the creative restructuring of personnel irregularities and necessary throughput of human capital capacity rightsizing.

Parties affected downstream are encouraged to utilise their forward thinking hats and realign their tool belts to the non-ongoing contract situation within a short timeframe totality. We anticipate dynamic new overarching metrics of holistic staff wellbeingness at the end of the day. Surfing where the waves are should galvanise a global blue-sky modality that will roll out and trickle down the Monday mood mountain into the value valley.

The bottom line is that this innovative accounting strategy built on our thought-leaders’ primary policies will cascade the empowerment of partnership change points in the hands-on repurposing of mission critical networks and facilitate across-the-board calibration, transitioning from a space of underperfect monetisation streams to an achievable year-end profit margin, and leveraging consecutive game plans to uptick a full-spectrum benchmarking solution.

We are grateful for your understanding.



Winning 'translation':

Underling,

You have failed yet again, which means the company is failing because of you. The powers that be know of your failings. They have given us the authority to act swiftly and brutally. For the good of the company, you will be granted no mercy.

We can make the company better, stronger, faster. We have the technology. First step: less eating, more working.

Second step: less talking, more working. You bottom feeders will no longer have the opportunity to even talk about forming a revolution, which to us is more annoying than it is hopeless.
Step three: say goodbye to the person sitting next to you. You will now be doing their job as well as your own. You’re welcome.

Now… mush!

Your failings will not cause this company to lose money. Do you understand? This company is in the business of making money and we intend to make lots of money. You are in the business of doing what we tell you to do and we intend to tell you to do a lot.

As always, you have no say in this.

Posted by Joe McVeigh on 25th May, 2011


Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/critical-learnings-going-forward

The humourous nature of gobbledygook

The business of gobbledegook

Posted by Stan Carey on May 11, 2011

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When we communicate in a business environment, obscure jargon is an occupational hazard. Given how specialised are many industries and work environments, it’s natural that people will use a certain amount of terminology that won’t always make much sense to outsiders. The trouble is when this language is used in inappropriate contexts, or when it becomes so vague and jumbled as to be impenetrable even to its target audience.

Business depends on presenting a positive and knowledgeable front. It’s generally considered important to reassure stockholders and potential clients and investors – to talk the talk, and to downplay fears and bad news. Markets are notoriously sensitive. But there’s a fine line between optimism and fancy. Some people make a habit of bluffing; they conceal or avoid the truth through the use of gobbledegook peppered with buzzwords and clichés. For example:

In the current economic climate, we have a paradigm-shifting window of opportunity to capitalise on integrated sustainability in a value-centred industry environment, thereby incentivising operant personnel to migrate strategically towards asset realignment and deliverable frameworks for the bottom line of leveraging synergistic output productivity going forward …

It’s possible to find occasional half-sense in this muddle of management jargon. (I made it up, but it’s only slightly exaggerated.) Passages like this can sometimes indicate overcompensation for a lack of meaning or understanding, or sometimes a sincere and tantalising effort to convey plans and sense by someone who has simply lost the knack of doing so in plain English. Hence the recourse to what is, in the ears of most listeners, mystifying gibberish.

Plain-language alternatives to gobbledegook are not always available or obvious to speakers, and when we speak extemporaneously we’re under more pressure to keep talking than to carefully search for the best and simplest phrases. Used repeatedly, even the most hollow jargon can gain a woolly kind of meaning, and so its currency grows. String enough of it together, and you’ve got an impressive chunk of wordy nonsense that your boss might swallow rather than admit to not knowing what you’re talking about.

Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/the-business-of-gobbledegook

The Language of Diplomacy

From the Economist Johnson Blog:

The language of diplomacy

Jan 27th 2011, 10:06 by Bagehot

WHAT has happened to the language of diplomacy? It is reported in London that William Hague, Britain's foreign secretary, has been shocked by the poor spelling and jargon-infested English he finds in notes from his diplomats. Conservative commentators, such as Charles Moore of the Spectator, detect a broader slippage of good manners and education across the civil service. That may be so—Mr Moore, an unusually polite man by the standards of his trade—is shocked to learn that Labour ministers rarely sent letters of thanks after official visits, leaving younger civil servants at a loss when asked to draft such notes for their new, Conservative bosses.

Friends of mine inside the Foreign Office concur with this gloomy assessment of their youngest colleagues, who—though bright and often expensively educated—struggle to write English with clarity, let alone flair.
I wonder if blaming the juniors is entirely fair. My experience is that even rather grand figures in the world of foreign policy have been steeped in jargon and human resources gibberish for ages. I was recently at a private meeting for diplomats and foreign policy types (I had better not say where). It was a festival of what one ambassador I know calls "bullshit bingo", with certain buzzwords coming up again and again.

The worst? "Going forward" has infected the world of diplomacy just as thoroughly as the world of business, as has talk of "stakeholders". I am alarmed at the rise and rise of "piece", as in "when it comes to the trans-Atlantic relationship, we need to focus on the energy piece, and not just the strategic piece." For that matter, "strategic" now seems to mean little more than "important". I am told that "granular" is increasingly popular, and means the opposite of "big picture".

I have yet to recover, though, from a comment made about a recent international summit. It was, we were told, marked by few "benchmarkable deliverables."

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/01/foreign_policy_english


Note: Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language - Don Watson, is a good read. Buzzwords in the corporate world also include: commitment, enhance, flexibility, in terms of, outcome

The subtleties of corporate English

From The Economist blogger Johnson:

The subtleties of corporate English

Dec 8th 2010, 16:56 by G.L. | NEW YORK

MY only excuse for failing to produce any Johnsonia during R.L.G.'s absence last week is that I've been very busy on a new business venture here at The Economist—of which I can say little, except that it involves one hecka lot of meetings. And so I've been more exposed than usual to business English and its peculiar phrases. These could be explained simply as cultural markers of the business tribe, but I suspect each one contains its own subtle cues and subtext; herewith my attempts to speculate on their origins and meaning.

Reach out

Usage: R.L.G. griped about this one a while back, but it's not just PR people who use it. Among the people I work with, at least, "I'll reach out to Joe" seems to have almost entirely replaced "I'll contact Joe" and "I'll talk to Joe".

Source: I don't know—an inversion of what used to be called public relations, propaganda or proselytism and is now called "outreach", perhaps? Or else an inexplicable  Motown reference?

Subtext: The phrase implies an added effort, a stretch beyond the normal, and the subtext usually seems to be either "I'll do Joe the grudging favour of asking his opinion even though he wouldn't normally get half a look into what we're doing", or "I'll take the risk of asking Joe for his advice even though he's probably far too busy and probably sees our project as a threat to his entire existence". A little less cynically, one might argue that "reach out" should in fact be considered a distinct phrasal verb meaning "to talk to someone outside one's normal circle of contacts".

As an aside, though, I will note that another of the phrases "reach out" seems to be displacing in business-speak is "get in touch with", which seems normal to us now but was probably decried as a barbarity in its day. (Its original meaning, says the OED, is the one that signifies being aware or informed, eg, "to be in touch with public opinion").


Touch base

Usage: "Let's touch base tomorrow" means "let's talk tomorrow". Unlike "contact" and "talk to", though
"touch base" doesn't seem to have been eclipsed by "reach out".

Source: Baseball, I presume, which may explain its resilience in a country that loves sporting metaphors. Yet if so the metaphor is strangely inept, given that in the sport, "touching base" is a solitary, win-lose action: the runner and the fielder vie to touch base first. In this case, by contrast, touching base means collaborating.

Subtext: The word "touch" lends an air of lightness and brevity: "touching base" implies a quick conversation, a reassurance that you won't take up too much of someone's time, whereas "reaching out" doesn't. It also implies informality. I would venture that the dictionary definition of "to touch base" should be "to hold a meeting that does not require any of the parties to check calendar availability on their BlackBerrys".


To your point

Usage: It's terribly important, at least in American business meetings, to be constantly acknowledging the contributions other people have made, so that everybody feels included. But instead of "as you said" or "as Jane mentioned", it's "to your point" or "to Jane's point".

Source: No real mystery here: it's the common phrase "make a point". But I think this is a clue to the real meaning, which is...

Subtext: Since it's possible—oh, so possible—to say a lot at a meeting without making any points at all, saying "to Jane's point" is, in the continuing spirit of positivity and good team relations, a way to bestow even greater recognition upon Jane's contribution. After all, if something is worthless, we say it "has no point", and business documents are all in bullet points. So I will posit that a "point" is now actually a discrete unit of measurement (soon to be adopted under the  Système International) for useful contributions. Kilopoints, megapoints, nanopoints et alia all to follow, just as soon as someone has invented the measuring tools.

Going forward

Usage: A favourite disfavourite of mine, this notionally means "from now on", but often just signifies "now" and is just as often totally redundant:

I am pleased to announced that I have nominated Kiyasha Gonzalez-Guggenheim to be our new head of meatball packaging going forward.

or

Kiyasha's contribution will be particularly valuable in ensuring that all our customers have a consistent and satisfying meatball presentation experience going forward.

Source: Not a clue.
Real meaning: Again, as with "to your point", this is all about having the right attitude. In business it is good to look to the future; one of the most damning subtle indictments you can make of ideas or people is that they are "not forward-looking". Reminding everyone that we are, indeed, going forward and not moving backward is essential in boosting morale. This is especially true after cataclysmic setbacks:

“Our charge going forward is to have realistic, clear goals and to execute them expeditiously.” (New Orleans deputy mayor Cedric Grant, after Hurricane Katrina).

(And by the way—I look forward to "execute expeditiously" becoming widespread enough, going forward, to include on a future version of this list.)

I do note in passing that last year some people set up an entire website devoted to purging their organisation of the phrase "going forward", and reported some success. But in the wider world it seems very much alive.


Deep(er) dive

Usage: To take a close or closer look: "I'll do a deeper dive on those figures on Monday."
Source: Umm... diving.
Subtext: There's something athletic, soulful even, about the thought of physically diving into a spreadsheet, kicking around in its dusky deep columns, paddling lazily through the surf of numbers, digging for hidden gems among its pivot tables, and coming up for air gasping but ecstatic, with the decimal points cascading down your forehead. It could be a subtle signal to colleagues of the effort you are about to make as you hold your breath and plunge into the numbers. Or maybe it's nothing more than an attempt to romanticise to yourself what is otherwise a soul-deadening activity.

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/12/business_clich%C3%A9s