Management-speak

“Customer first line engagement on the fly”

I can actually explain this one, when I worked at B&Q the phrase we used was ‘hi on the fly’, basically it’s a way of telling you to ackowledge people, if you are busy and walking past them to get where you are going, then you just say hi as you pass them by.

So I guess in the scenario with a customer, it’s a simple hi or hello, without scaring them off by asking if they need help, they are much more likely to respond to this.

I couldn’t agree more.
This thread caused creaking and groaning in the old brain and I remembered something I found years ago – http://www.dack.com/web/bull****.html

It’s a bullsh*t generator, saves you having to think up your own.
You’ll have to guess what the asterisks mean, I’ve been censored!

and it all stems from Gus Hedges on Drop the Dead Donkey 🙂

Ohhhh…. I just wish I could post a link to some of the classic examples of management b*llockspeak on our Intranet at work!!! :D:D:D

I heard a good one last night. “We have an anomaly” at a satellite launch where the launch rocket exploded like some enormous firework. For ‘we have an anomaly’ read ‘It has all gone pear shaped’ or ‘Oh sh!t!’.

Sounds a lot like the tragic loss of Challenger in 1986 – as the world watched in horror as the shuttle blew up, mission control were calmly announcing ‘Obviously a major malfunction…’ 😮

Glasgow Uni is looking at losing around 280 staff in the next few months. In a message to staff, the Principal came out with the following line saying they were looking at…:

helping colleagues whose skills or aspirations are now less aligned with the University’s requirements to move on.

I heard a good one last night. “We have an anomaly” at a satellite launch where the launch rocket exploded like some enormous firework. For ‘we have an anomaly’ read ‘It has all gone pear shaped’ or ‘Oh sh!t!’.
The boss says ‘we need to address this problem’ meaning ‘I screwed up and I’m passing the buck to you lot to get me out of the crap again.’

Another one new to me surfaced on Friday – “Brown Paper mapping”. What the hell is that??!! :confused: :confused: :confused:

Presumably it started out as white paper, but the idea was crap, so…

~Howling at whalebone’s post~ Juggling frogs and weasels?!? I will have to remember that one for tomorrow’s meeting…

One often used phrase around here that springs to mind is “think outside the box”…it went rapidly out of favour when I turned the tables on those concerned and managed to fit it into just about every sentence in one week…:diablo:

Another one new to me surfaced on Friday – “Brown Paper mapping”. What the hell is that??!! :confused: :confused: :confused:

However my biggest bug bear is acronyms, our comliance department loves them, I quote, the “RAF must be sent to the HOG for signing before submitting to the RAC”

I know what you mean. In our computer system the word cumulative is abbreviated as… you guessed it, cum. So we get customers and suppliers ringing in asking for our cum, their cum, predicted cum…

Used to drive me nuts as well, hard to keep a staright face sometimes.
A variation in Steve’s game was played by some friends of mine.

At the end of many middle management meetings it is often practice to invite the thoughts of the individuals present. If the company vision has empowered those at the coalface some of these most valuable assets may be at such meetings and two pals of mine who were brothers working for the same large firm but at opposite ends of the country to each other played the management speak game to perfection.
Bored with playing buzzword bingo they came up with their own ruse.

Brother 1 would insert an agreed ludicrious phrase into a meeting and brother 2 would reply with his own predetermed gobbledegook if brother 1’s found it’s way via many meetings to the other end of the land.
The real fun bit was watching all the management nod sagely as the spurious words were delivered, no one wanting to question the fact that they didn’t understand the meaning for fear of looking as stupid as they actually were.

The best one they got to make the round trip has always stuck in my memory.

Manager: “So Bob, what’s your view ?”
Brother 1: “I think I’ll have to hedgehog on this one”

and sure enough a few weeks later at the other end ‘have to hedgehog’ was indeed used by a middle clone.
The confirmation reply was equally daft.

Manager: “Peter, do you think this is a winner ?”
Brother 2: “I have to be honest I think we could be in danger of ending up trying to juggle frogs and weasels”

This crowned brother 2 as supreme champion because it was used in a rally the troops speech the following month (attended by brother 1) by a member of the board of directors ! :diablo:

‘Lions led by donkeys’ springs to mind

Sadly following the US lead this tripe is endemic in British management but I wonder has it spead to Japan ? Germany ?
I really can’t imagine the senior board members at Panasonic or BMW talking in riddles.

When one of the oven’s had a problem last month a trainee manger said to me,

Can you find a positive solution keeping in mind cost and production requirements.

I turned round and said

no but I can fix the bloody thing if you want

he was not happy but who cares.

My Mum recently sent a complaint about the Royal Mail to Adam Crozier, who is the Royal Mail boss. The reply we received was full of what you would call “management speak” and fancy terminology.

Another rather amusing game that we used to play in days gone by was to team up with a colleague before a meeting that we were both due to attend, and agree a ‘category’ that we would pluck random words from. We usually picked ‘animals’, ‘towns’ or ‘fruit’. Object of the exercise would then be to go into the meeting, and see who could fit the most words from the category into the meeting, without a) laughing, and b) anyone else realising what we were up to. One point per word, winner was the guy who scored the most points, loser bought the beers afterwards.

Ah, happy days… 🙂

We use Bullsh*t Bingo to spot the number of management speak words used by individuals. It’s usually individuals who are out to impress and talk complete b*llocks while doing so and say nothing……..

Too many TLA’s there Ian.

Another rather amusing game that we used to play in days gone by was to team up with a colleague before a meeting that we were both due to attend, and agree a ‘category’ that we would pluck random words from. We usually picked ‘animals’, ‘towns’ or ‘fruit’. Object of the exercise would then be to go into the meeting, and see who could fit the most words from the category into the meeting, without a) laughing, and b) anyone else realising what we were up to. One point per word, winner was the guy who scored the most points, loser bought the beers afterwards.

Ah, happy days… 🙂

Whatever you say, make sure you have covers on your TPS reports…

When you have to say ‘NO’ try “I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request” instead :diablo:

“a sloping glidepath of headcount”

I like that one. I shall have to try and drop it into my next meeting and see if I can do so without laughing.