Business might be at a turning point, but business-speak is still mired in silly acronyms, obtuse catch phrases, and meaningless jargon. Here’s a guide to some of the words causing head scratching in cubicles and boardrooms across the country.
Bandwidth The amount of work one person can reasonably handle. Your bandwidth is usually the inverse of your salary.Brand accretive Things that make people think your brand is even better than before. Should a brand accretive opportunity come along, you must take it at any cost, or all of your khakis will be confiscated.Circle back To get back to. In other words, we will not talk about this now, but will at some other, indeterminate time. Do not get your hopes up.Deep dive To really get into a subject. Most meetings deal only with superficialities, but in a deep-dive, one important issue will be discussed superficially. See also: drill down.Deck A PowerPoint presentation. So named because the slides, stacked on top of each other, resemble a deck of cards (no, seriously). Please include the cool animations PowerPoint makes available to you.Diversified Having more than one business offering. This does not mean anything about ethnic diversity. There are very few minorities involved.Hard stop A time at which a meeting must stop so as not to overlap with the start of the next meeting. Meetings are where things get done. More meetings means more things are getting done. Schedule as many as possible, back to back.Human Capital Employees. Your employees are merely human incarnations of your company’s money. It helps to think of them this way to avoid getting emotionally involved.Ideate To think of ideas. People who usually have ideas are scary and may wear denim blue jeans to work. Saying “ideate” makes them feel less like dangerous creatives and more like safe business robots.Platform A device for delivering content to consumers. This could be a magazine, or a website, or, especially, mobile phones. Kids go ga-ga over mobile phones. Get to work on that. See also: multiplatform.Quick win An easily accomplished task. In other words, something you should have done already, but can now do quickly to appease someone who is upset with you.Silo Different parts of your company that operate separately. Using agricultural terms helps you feel like a man of the people. See also: Bucket.
