Author Topic: more insane management speak phrases  (Read 144145 times)

Rig of Jarkness

  • An Englishman abroad
Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #75 on: 04 August, 2011, 08:06:43 am »
I've got a meeting today to get our ducks in a row.  Best to make sure we're on the same page while we're at it. (Synergy  :thumbsup:)
Aero but not dynamic

rower40

  • Not my boat. Now sold.
Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #76 on: 04 August, 2011, 08:17:13 am »
I like the word "Synergy" when used correctly.  If a job takes one person 4 hours, but the same job takes two people one hour each, then that's Synergy.  More often one encounters the situation where that job takes two people three hours each, so the overall timescales go down by throwing more people at it (finished in 3 hours rather than 4), but increasing the cost (6 man-hours vs 4).

Most of my stuff is beyond even that; it'll take me 4 hours, but if there's someone "helping", then it'll take us 8 hours each.  Hours 2, 3 and 4 are me unpicking all the stuff that the other person got wrong, and hours 5-8 are the Fight, the A&E visit and the Court Case.
Be Naughty; save Santa a trip

David Martin

  • Thats Dr Oi You thankyouverymuch
Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #77 on: 04 August, 2011, 10:09:59 am »

That is a fantastic quote..
I like the word "Synergy" when used correctly.  If a job takes one person 4 hours, but the same job takes two people one hour each, then that's Synergy.  More often one encounters the situation where that job takes two people three hours each, so the overall timescales go down by throwing more people at it (finished in 3 hours rather than 4), but increasing the cost (6 man-hours vs 4).

Most of my stuff is beyond even that; it'll take me 4 hours, but if there's someone "helping", then it'll take us 8 hours each.  Hours 2, 3 and 4 are me unpicking all the stuff that the other person got wrong, and hours 5-8 are the Fight, the A&E visit and the Court Case.
"By creating we think. By living we learn" - Patrick Geddes

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #78 on: 05 August, 2011, 10:26:50 am »
I like the word "Synergy" when used correctly.  If a job takes one person 4 hours, but the same job takes two people one hour each, then that's Synergy.
Making beds. Two people can do it about four times as fast as one person, & do a better job. And they both have a better time, because they have someone to talk to.

[Experience of three months working as a hospital orderly, back in the days when they made beds properly]
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Aeroflash

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #79 on: 05 August, 2011, 12:45:38 pm »
The one that really winds me up is 'going forwards'. As in, 'we'll be working on this report going forward and....' WHY?!

I'm with you on that one. Quite apart from the phrase's surpassing ugliness, it is utterly redundant given that humans are as yet incapable of travelling backward in time. I've even seen 'in the future we will be doing x going forward', adding yet more redundancy.

As management jargon it is one thing but it seems to be creeping into normal speech now, the same way 'take on board' and 'touch base' have.

On the other hand, a PR consultant of my acquaintance called Andy Green has great fun mocking the buzzwords and jargon of creativity ('outside the box', 'blue sky thinking' etc) and has built into his training courses 'thinking in big and small boxes' and 'green light/red light' thinking. I think the latter refers to traffic lights rather than <falsetto> Roooxanne... </falsetto>

Tim Hall

  • Victoria is my queen
Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #80 on: 05 August, 2011, 01:42:16 pm »
Correct usage of management speak, lesson 1.

"How would you like you pizza delivered?"

"I'm thinking 'out of the box'"

There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can
"overhaul" it, or you can ride it.  (Jerome K Jerome)

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #81 on: 05 August, 2011, 01:45:00 pm »
shouldn't that be in the box?... ???
Cheers
Rich

A Vision of a Champion is someone who is bent over, drenched with sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when no one else is watching

Mrs Pingu

  • Who ate all the pies? Me
    • Twitter
Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #82 on: 05 August, 2011, 09:32:51 pm »
I want to punch people when they say 'touch base'.
Ain't nobody I work with getting to touch my base, man.
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #83 on: 06 August, 2011, 01:33:16 pm »
Mrs Pingu are you in touch with your base feelings?
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

diapsaon0

  • Advena ego sum in terra
Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #84 on: 06 August, 2011, 08:38:46 pm »
Who is that base fellow?

He's not a bass - he's a tenor

He can't be a tenor - he works in a shop

OK then - he must be a counter tenor

 ;D

Advena ego sum in Terra

Pingu

  • Put away those fiery biscuits!
  • Mrs Pingu's domestique
    • the Igloo
Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #85 on: 06 August, 2011, 08:48:27 pm »
Mrs Pingu are you in touch with your base feelings?

She has been trying to get in touch with her bass feelings  ;)

Rig of Jarkness

  • An Englishman abroad
Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #86 on: 07 August, 2011, 10:22:25 am »
The more I think of this the more phrases I realise I know so well that I think of them as everyday conversation rather than management speak.  A few more - heads up, flag up, on my radar, backfill, KT.  And I spend most of my working day escalating. 

One that does irritate me is when senior executives justify an action on the grounds that 'it was the right thing to do'.  Oh well, if you say so, that's all right then, I'll say no more about it.
Aero but not dynamic

Euan Uzami

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #87 on: 07 August, 2011, 10:42:16 pm »
The more I think of this the more phrases I realise I know so well that I think of them as everyday conversation rather than management speak.  A few more - heads up, flag up, on my radar, backfill, KT.  And I spend most of my working day escalating. 

One that does irritate me is when senior executives justify an action on the grounds that 'it was the right thing to do'.  Oh well, if you say so, that's all right then, I'll say no more about it.

;D
I do admit to having used the phrase 'exactly that' when I couldn't be bothered to re-explain something so that they understand it better.
The following conversation:
Me: (explain something fairly complex)
Colleague: "what do you mean?"
Me: "well, exactly that!"

Bluebottle

  • Everybody's gotta be somewhere
Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #88 on: 09 August, 2011, 08:21:01 pm »
Did I really hear someone use "deleverage" on the Today programme this morning???
Dieu, je vous soupçonne d'ĂȘtre un intellectuel de gauche.

FGG #5465

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #89 on: 09 August, 2011, 08:24:35 pm »
Did I really hear someone use "deleverage" on the Today programme this morning???

Deleverage - isn't that the verb for trying to counter the effect of viewing spectacular decolletage;D
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

rower40

  • Not my boat. Now sold.
Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #90 on: 10 August, 2011, 08:09:14 am »
Did I really hear someone use "deleverage" on the Today programme this morning???
Yebbut it was in the "Business" news, so it doesn't really count.  (Not that "Business" should = "The City", but it does in the strange world of Radio 4.  What the rest of us do is just Industrial.)
Be Naughty; save Santa a trip

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #91 on: 10 August, 2011, 08:23:18 am »
A couple that get used in the team - but probably not used by the people that use the phrases already listed:

"Fur coat and no knickers"

"He's put his trousers on before his pants"

Both generally related to the keen beanies that work in the development team that come up whizzy ideas that basically don't work but get delivered because it "ticks a box" on their upward career - leaving us poor thickies in operations to unpick the mess left behind  and come up with a way of getting it to work ie a manual "work-around". Whist the keen beanie goes on to "bigger and better things" - most of them get found out eventually tho.     O:-)

They have no substance and don't understand that getting the basics right is more important that implementing a new feature that doesn't actually work.


Rig of Jarkness

  • An Englishman abroad
Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #92 on: 11 August, 2011, 05:12:49 pm »
Today I found myself thanking a colleague for helping to get a piece of work 'over the line'.  Dammit !

I've also realised how often I use the word 'bandwidth' when referring to colleagues rather than machinery.   C'est la vie.
Aero but not dynamic

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #93 on: 11 August, 2011, 05:25:18 pm »
I've also realised how often I use the word 'bandwidth' when referring to colleagues rather than machinery.   C'est la vie.

I've got quite good at stomping on that whenever it comes up.

Them: "Jeff says he may be able to do <task X> but might not have the bandwidth."
Me: "By 'bandwidth' do you mean time?"
Them: "Er, yes."
Me: "Thanks."

...a few occurrences later...

Them: "Does anyone have the bandw...err...time to help so and so doing <task foo>?"
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Euan Uzami

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #94 on: 11 August, 2011, 11:15:28 pm »
We are now going through a phase of "backlog pruning". Shuffling things under the carpet, then, really.  ::-) ;)

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #95 on: 12 August, 2011, 07:43:25 pm »
I bought some shares today because the mid week short selling pulse had bottomed out market values below yield, balance sheet and bond returns.  (They were cheap)
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #96 on: 23 August, 2011, 06:31:05 pm »
Let's engage in a conversation to enable a soup-to-nuts deconstruction, or 'deep-dive', if you will.

 :sick:

Hehe, you just made me look really in-the-know today, thanks! A client was reading something and said "'Soup-to-nuts'? What...?" and I was able to explain and look like I'm in touch with the lingo...

Not that she was very impressed. "Who finishes with nuts?"

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #97 on: 23 August, 2011, 06:40:30 pm »
My boss has an annoying habit of assigning people a 'hollywood principle'.  This is especially confusing as we're all developers and have a particular understanding of the term. 

What he means is 'I'll assume this is working unless you say otherwise'.  If he'd only say that instead of clinging to his stupid invented jargon, he wouldn't have to explain himself all the bloody time. 

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #98 on: 23 August, 2011, 08:14:06 pm »
My boss has an annoying habit of assigning people a 'hollywood principle'.  This is especially confusing as we're all developers and have a particular understanding of the term. 

What he means is 'I'll assume this is working unless you say otherwise'.  If he'd only say that instead of clinging to his stupid invented jargon, he wouldn't have to explain himself all the bloody time.

Prince 2 exception reporting?
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

Re: more insane management speak phrases
« Reply #99 on: 23 August, 2011, 09:53:54 pm »

This thread has me alternately cracking up and groaning in severe pain. Ever since somebody decided that "government should be more like business*," this management-speak has been spreading like a fungus.

* Don't get me started.
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