There are two kinds of business speaker. The first is the brave men and women who make speeches at conferences; the second is anybody in the corporate world who uses bizarre jargon as part of everyday language. If you’re not up to speed, here’s a beginner’s guide by the David Attenborough of the business jungle, Guy Browning.
Al desco
Anything done at the desk: lunch, phone call, sex etc
Bleeding Edge
The cutting edge of cutting edge
Blue Sky Thinking
Staring out of the window
CLM
Career Limiting Move
Come to Jesus Meeting
A meeting with life changing implications
Covered Off
Something done to cover backside
Data-free Analysis
Guesswork
Disintermediate
Do it yourself
Dogfooding
Testing your own product
Due Diligence
Check for criminal record or other nasties before lifting your kimono (qv)
Elephant in the Room
Truth unspeakable as would be CLM (qv)
Face Time
When home workers remind their employers who they are
Future Proof
To ensure relevance going forward (qv)
Glide Path
The pattern something describes going forward (qv)
Going Forward
A phrase added to dull thoughts to imply energy
Head Ups
Warning that something will be going forward
Joined-up
Basic common sense has been applied
Lifting Your Kimono
Revealing some of your business secrets
Meta Ignorance
Not knowing what you don’t know
Mission Critical
Quite important
On it, I’m
Had forgotten but will do it now
Optics
Window dressing
Out of the Box
Something easy to use immediately
Outside the Box
Where you think to get out of the box things
Phone it in
Put in least possible effort
Pushback
Pushing an idea back into the box outside of which it was thought
Stakeholder Engagement
Widest possible arse covering
Sweat the Assets
Work everything that isn’t you harder
Win-Win
A way of making a normal deal sound special