Decoding Corporate Speak

How many times you heard the polite and respectful sounding “let’s take this offline“?

It’s a polite way of saying “shut up and stop arguing with me in front of everyone – it is making me look bad“.

There are phrases that we utter in a professional corporate setting that doesn’t raise a single eyebrow, yet if we were to say to friends or family, we would be mocked or looked at that with that “WTF” facial expression.

Inspired from a recent Reddit post, I’ve pulled together the classics and added my own fun interpretation of what they really mean.

Category	Phrase	The Real Meaning
Meetings	Giving you time back	As if one can gift time – What the hell am I going to do with that extra 4 minutes?!?!
	Stand up / All hands / Town hall	Waste time talking about what we would have been doing had we not been meeting
	Deep dive	Take a simple decision and make it hard to implement
	Let’s workshop that	Do not like what you suggested, so we’ll have a group session, pretend to listen to others, and then we’ll do what I say.
	Decks	Waste time on a nice looking PowerPoint so we can impress others with our creativity and they might realize we have no clue how we are going to do this
	Action items / Next steps	Classic COYA tactic to know who to blame when shit doesn’t get done
Avoidance	Circle back / Punt / Table That	We are never to talk of this ever again
	Put a pin in that	Giving you hope, but we’re really never talking about this again
	Take this offline	Shut up and stop arguing with me in front of everyone – I am looking bad
	Put that in the parking lot	Documenting that we are never going to talk about this again ever
	Have a sidebar	Completely off-topic side conversation, but needs to be justified somehow
	Ping me / Reach Out	Giving you the hope that I might help, but don’t even think about calling upon me. I do not want this responsibility
	Touch base	I don’t trust you are working on it, so I am letting you know I am watching
	Don’t boil the ocean	I know you are going to complicate this very simple task dumb-dumb
Strategy	North star	As if we all know where we are actually going!
	Paradigm shift	Fuck, that didn’t work. We need to rethink this.
	Ecosystem	Make it as awkward as possible to use our product so clients can’t be arsed relearning a new product
	Game changer	We’ve actually delivering something useful that our clients have been asking for all along
	Run it up the flagpole	It’s a wild crazy idea, so I need to widen the audience outside of these doubting dim wits to those that recognize true genius
Efficiency	Streamline / Automate / Scale	Reduce friction that we introduced previously, and then sell the better way of doing now that we understand what we are doing
	Low-hanging fruit	Taking credit for the real easy shit
	Best practice	The Lemmings justification for doing it a convoluted way
	Move the needle	This new feature/idea might actually work this time
	Value-add	Delivering on features clients thought they were already getting, so we can’t charge them more
	Drill down	I’ve no clue what you just said. Explain it to me like a 5 year old
	Close the loop	Did it actually work?
Nonsense	Bandwidth	I have only so many hands and hours in the day
	Leverage (as a verb)	I need help from someone or something else
	Bleeding edge	The old shit we are using is still fine, since we didn’t get budget for the new stuff
	Double down	Confirming that we are definitely going in the wrong direction
Metrics	KPI	A metric to measure how poorly you are doing, and will be used to beat you over the head regularly and claim “it’s just data”
	ROI	Metric to show you are not actually creating any revenue, just more cost
Overused	Synergy	We are a natural fit as we have something in common – we both like the color blue!
	Cadence	Because saying “recurring” makes me sound dull
	Cohort	We are not going to be accused of profiling, so we are going to use this instead of group
	Think outside the box	Can you try and have an original thought? Just one.
	Let’s unpack that	A completely dumb idea, so let’s really pull it apart and show just how dumb it is
Alignment	Aligned / Alignment / Harmonize	Can everyone make sure they are in agreement with me?
	Let’s ensure we’re aligned on our deliverables	I want to make sure everyone is definitely doing what I say.
Ego	I told you so	Converting previous unwavering support into disappointment
	We could have checked it	You should have checked, as it is completely your fault
	I fought with management for this	I got shot down and had to come back with my tail between my legs
	My team owns…	Get the hell way from the fiefdom I have taken years to build
	Thought leader	I really came up with this shit myself
Red Flags	If we’re not growing, we’re dying	We really do need to think of new shit to build
	Building the plane while flying it	We skipped planning and ignored the experts, so we are literally make shit up as we go along
	We can’t do that	I have absolutely no idea how to do that
	We’re a family	I am going to ask you to do a lot of shit that is outside of your job description and working hours
	Culture fit	I don’t like you at all, but I can’t say that out loud
	Radical candor	Going to say something that will most likely appear in my HR record
	New normal	We have no clue why its working, but let’s just stick with it
Aggressive	Gentle reminder	I’ve waited long enough now, what the hell are you doing?
	Transparent	Going to pretend I have given you everything you need
	Self-assessment for your annual review	Rate yourself so we can justify what we have already decided
	Is the juice is worth the squeeze	That seems like an awfully lot of work to do. Do I really need to do it?
	Sexy	We just changed the color/font, so it looks hip
	Create me a ticket	I have no clue what you just asked me to do, but hopefully you writing it down will make it more clearer.
	I’ll create you a ticket	COYA – I want it documented and dated, that I asked you to do this
Metaphors	Eating our own dog food	We’re actually using this crap ourselves as we can’t afford the real version either
	Lipstick on a pig	We’ve given up. It was harder than we thought and it should now be someone else’s problem.
	Customer journey	Trying to convince our clients our way is the right way because we can’t implement it the way they want
	100%	I disagree with you, but there was one small irrelevant point you made that I roughly align with
	Let’s double click on that	Let’s explore this, but I am going to pretend my life is nothing more than a mouse action. Scared to ask what “right click” is