Corporate Codswallop

A survey for the bingo firm Tombola has revealed that two thirds of British workers admit to "using business slang regularly" despite mostly hating and not understanding it...

Now I don't plan to offer a deep dive into the research but if we circle back and drill down into the granular detail ... I am pivoting to get you up to speed so you can hit the ground running and start on a level playing field. No one is trying to reinvent the wheel here. I'm just reaching out to run a few ideas up the flagpole and see who grabs the low-hanging fruit.

Gathering Fruit
Henri Charles Antoine Baron  (1816-1885)
Photo Credit: The Cooper Gallery [CC BY-NC]

Because if 87 per cent of you are regularly faced with business slang you don't understand, as a survey suggests, and more than a third have "felt stupid or embarrassed when corporate phrases are used in the workplace" then it's going to require a paradigm shift in your attitude, a sea change, a lane change, a gear change, a tidal change.

Did you see how you can put literally anything in front of "change" and it still just means "change" but you suddenly sound more important. That's all it is. Just a  bit of blue-sky thinking, green-sky optionality, red sky at night, shepherd's delight.

Bit of a curve ball there but that's called "thinking outside the box", as opposed to circling the box for a reach-around, tickling the low-hanging fruit and sliding up and down my flagpole. 

No one is trying to reinvent the playing field, I just wanted to loop you into a holistic approach from the get-go. But no worries, I can always ping you for an update if you want to jump on a call, hop on a Zoom, leap on a LinkedIn, straddle a Slack thread or bang the sweet bejesus out of a team's meeting...

According to the survey "I just wanted to touch base" is the most hated office phrase in Britain, with 18 per cent of respondents literally vomiting every time they see it. How it came came out as more annoying than "I just wanted to reach out" is anyone's guess...

It may sound complicated but it's all very straightforward when you've got your ducks in a row and plenty of boots on the ground: you simply action the optics so as to optimise the visuals, then promise to pencil it in until such a time as you can put it on hold. But don't fast forward because then you'll have to rewind, and that's no way to synergise...

(Giles Coren, The Times, 2024)

Can I just dive in? Just to get you up to speed, Giles, let's put a pin in that. At the end of the day all your talk is jam tomorrow and strictly for the birds. Let me be clear or shall I make that, let me be perfectly clear or even better still, let me be abundantly clear: going forward you need to reach-around more.  Anyway great to touch flagpoles.