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.
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