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Corporate bull.

ended 23. January 2023

Sorry for ‘reaching out’ to you all on a Sunday, but I wondered if you could ‘collaborate’ with me on a ‘strategic’ piece of PR. If you could ‘revert’ ASAP, that way we can ‘leverage’ this news alert to maximum effect and ‘hit the ground running’ tomorrow morning. Yip, you guessed it, this news alert is all about the business world being a festering cesspit of linguistic bull. What are the words and phrases in the business world that grind your gears the most? Tell us below. Oh, and if you could quickly complete >> this one question survey << too, that will give us a news hook (urghhh).

19 responses from the Newspage community

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Keith Hood
Mortgage and Protection advisor at Warners Financial Services
Whenever someone emails me telling me that they have "reached out" to me, I reach for the delete button in order to remove the cretin's message without reading it. Where do these idiots come from?
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Mary Maguire
Managing Director at Astute Recruitment Ltd
"Circling back" or "Let's circle back" both equally hideous David Brentisms best left forgotten. Circle back to what? Patronising cringey management speak that managers who shouldn't be managers use. Lol.
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Sam Alsop-Hall
Chief Strategy Officer at Clive Henry Group
I remember in my earlier career playing “bullshit bingo” with colleagues whenever a particular Director was holding court. We had so many “paradigm shifts” and “pivots” that we ended up in a parallel universe a couple of times a week. All she wanted to do was “touch base”, “bite the bullet” and “get the low handing fruit” and as young men in the workplace we were at least relieved when we established that the things she said weren’t actually innuendos. Wouldn’t have fancied “opening the kimono” with that one!
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Wes Wilkes
CEO at IronMarket Wealth
Controversial opinion, but I'm ok with it.
Relax, it's only words. I know that's a little incendiary but I mean I don't want anyone to 'reach out' anymore, or less, than 'get in touch' but why one is acceptable and one is not, just seems a bit intolerant to me.
Some of them make me howl, most of them I don't understand and a few of them have no doubt slipped into my and everyone else's conversations at some point.
So, if you do want to do some 'blue sky thinking' or talk about 'extending our runway' then as long as what you say afterwards is valuable, crack on!
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Mike Staton
Director at Staton Mortgages
It’s amazing how many unintelligent numptees try and use big words to make themselves sound more appealing! I receive a lot of these message request from people claiming to “reach out” and “add value” to my business, they want to “touch base” in “the first quarter” and “get all of our duck in a row”. I couldn’t watch the office because David Brent made me cringe, I don’t reply to these messages because of that reason, I literally want to punch my screen when I read them
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Steven Mather
Lawyer & Director at Steven Mather Solicitor
Anyone using corporate bull is an idiot who has most likely blagged their way through the job. And if you think corporate bull is bad, deal with it in the legal industry. It’s still full of “please find enclosed herewith”, lots of jargon and they don’t give you an opinion they say “I’m minded to agree”. And charge a fortune - well many but not all!
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Debbie Porter
Managing Director at Destination Digital Marketing
If ever there was a phrase that needs taking out for a long walk into the woods and leaving behind, it’s the word ‘hack’. Most ‘hacks’ simply illustrate ‘how to do something’ - I saw a hack for making your lunch tastier by adding a little salt and pepper. I mean, come on! Or there are ‘hacks’ that take way more time than doing something the normal way, which is the exact opposite of what a hack is supposed to do. It’s a word that really hacks me off.
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Carol Vickers
Owner at Created by Carol
I feel like nobody has yet mentioned "granularity". If we're not going to "get granular" on this topic then are we even trying? Honestly, such a lack of "ocean thinking" on such an important issue! Just "eat the frog" already! If you've yet finished your "deep dive". Feel free to "take this offline"...
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Dave Corbett
Head Of Protection at Protection 1st
I worked closely with a guy who couldn’t stop saying “abundance mentality” and every time he said it, I wanted to jump out of the 1st floor window as it was the quickest route to the pub opposite. It’s everywhere this kind of ‘buzz phrase’ rubbish and it makes me miserable. One of his other phrases was to “practice the pause” which was hilarious as he had the worst temper of anyone I’d ever met. Goodbye
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Eleanor Tweddell
Founder at Another Door
Deep dive and shallow paddling... ehm?
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Mark Grant
Business Finance Adviser at The Business Finance Branch
There are some phrases in business conversation that seem to point to a lack of imagination or substance - needing to convince clients that you are ‘client centric’ (where else would you put them?) or telling clients about all of the ‘synergies’ between you (without bothering to name any..) are good examples.
Talking to someone about the business you are doing - surely you have to mention the ‘low hanging fruit’?! Because when business is that easy to come by it’s obviously exclusive to you?!
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Rachel Hayward
MD at Ask the Chameleon
Sometimes I just can't help playing corporate bingo...why can't people speak plainly? My "favourite" - and there are many - is "low hanging fruit" or its better-known twin " quick wins"...meaning lazy, easy options with little to no value/impact/return...

what do I get for a full house?
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Jen David
Owner at Jen David
Anyone who doesn't feel nausea at the concept of an "icebreaker" is a wrong'un.
And anyone who "parachutes in" to sort out a project needs to take a long hard look at themselves.
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Katie Elliott
Director at HR Katie
Jargon in the workplace makes us feel special like we are part of an exclusive club. Another facet of this is the TLA or Three Letter Acronym. Why would you bother to write out all the words when you can throw in a TLA and show you really are DWTK (down with the kids, btw.)
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Jenny Blyth
Small business owner at Storm in a Teacup Gifts
‘Let’s park that’ has always annoyed me, particularly as I don’t drive. I’m also not a huge fan of ‘boss babe’ as it really patronises strong women in business.
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Katherine Steiner-Dicks
Founder at BuzzVestor Media
When it comes to corporate jargon let’s stop putting lipstick on the pig.
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Sara Hall
Founder at Lilibet & Phil Publishing House
My niche is full to the brim with "Life Coaches", most of whom are in their early 20's which always makes me smile, as a menopausal partridge. This is probably due to my memories of exactly how much of my own arse I was able to find with both hands in my early adulthood.

Then there are the visual storytellers, wellness coaches, disrupters and influencers? My problem is I'm always too polite to ask and I have a very creative imagination. I seriously believed that growth hacking was something to do with gardening.

Here's one for Dominic, TL;DR, which probably applies to every newspager response to this alert.
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Holly Hinton
Founder at Web Goddess
I had many a fun meeting playing "bullshit bingo" when working in corporate over 20 years ago and unfortunately little has changed.

'Low hanging fruit' is the term that annoys me most as I find it dismissive of an entire area of any business.

One of the best things about running my own company is that I simply don't allow any of that nonsense!
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Zana Parker
Owner at Birthing with Confidence
"Siloed thinking". I recently read a paper that mentioned silos and siloed thinking. I had to look it up. I thought they were for grain storage - how stupid am I?! I also want to puke when anyone "reaches out" to me. If they want to get in touch, have a chat, contact me.. that's fine but don't "reach out" in that creepy corporate way!