Swag
competing Priorities
Collaborate
Here’s my top 25 buzzwords and phrases that get bandied about. I’m sure you’ll add your own in the comments…
- Capturing hearts and minds: Aaaaghhhhh. Stop it. Stop it now. This is too clichéd. And may be way over the top for what you need to do.
- Agile: Note the big “A” — are you using it as an adjective (small a) as opposed to a large A (the methodology
- Benefits realisation: jargon for does your change pay off. Never use it outside of a business case!
- Rightsizing: Shudder. DO NOT USE. There is nothing right about laying people off, because you have made poor decisions.
- Paradigm shift: Thought it went out in the 80’s? Apparently not…
- Air-gap. A new one doing the rounds — it’s an IT network computing term, which means one computer is isolated from the others. It’s being used to describe teams that won’t talk to each other.
- Take them on a journey. Please stop it. All I can think of is National Lampoons Vacation.
- Disruption. One man’s disruption is another man’s discomfort. Be very careful about using this one…if its new for you it may not be disruptive for others.
- Time box: A project planning term which means thinking about deliverables in a fixed period of time. It should not be used as a verb. That’s just sloppy.
- Purpose driven: Nothing makes a change more noble than making sure it’s purpose driven…
- User adoption: Only to be used in IT change — otherwise you are being horrible to your employees.
- Collaborate: So so misused. Collaboration has impacts that are bigger than simply working together. It doesn’t mean play nicely.
- Grab the low hanging fruit: Or just find things that are easy to fix. Don’t forget low hanging fruit are exposed to the elements. Can rot quicker.
- Future Ready: A brand that every corporate change agenda uses… but here’s the thing. The future never arrives…
- Pivot: Once applied to strategic changes in the lean start up world, now seems to mean “oops, doing something different”
- Herding cats: I think we are doing cats a disservice here. Put some food down, they line up fast.
- Socialise the document: You mean share or send some-one a document for comment? Pass me the G&T…
- Change ready: Yep, in your dreams…
- Touch base and dialogue: God no, just no! You’re doing it wrong!
- Change champion: Only if they get to wear a sheriff’s badge…and stand on a dias.
- Drinking from the firehose: You mean you are overwhelmed? Then say that. Unless you have firemen as your change champions. TOTALLY different story.
- Synergistic: You mean it all fits together? Well pretty sure that was the intent.
- Hyperconnected: Ooh…so your internal organisation is connected to your external stakeholders. As it should be. Not too frenetic that one. Try uber connected.
- Holistic: Make sure it really is greater than the sum of all its parts. Holistic is more than organisational wide.
- Transform: ONLY to be used if something will truly change to something that can’t be imagined. Other wise it’s a step change. Oh wait… another buzzword bingo sheet?
