to be utterly sick of this maddeningly nonsensical bit of corporate wankspeak?

[MossyOilTank]

What is with the phrase "the piece" ... for example, "it's the piece around engagement with stakeholders" ... "the piece on communicating key messages" ... "the piece about maximizing outputs". IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING.

I can't think of a better way of describing an overwhelmingly complex change programme that does feel like boiling the ocean it's that huge.

How about 'huge, complex change'?

Surely the function is just made up of multiple teams?

I was thinking the exact same!!!

Am really enjoying this thread!

So glad I'm self employed

Not exactly wankspeak (though there's plenty of that in my organisation), but thete's a new thing of opening emails with "hey" - "Hey BigBamBoom, can we catch up about x?" So annoying.

RaraRachael
There's so much of this meaningless shit around - deep dives* due diligence*

Please tell me you're joking. Both of these are actual, legitimate names of things.

What's wrong with just "diligence"? And "investigation"

I use this as a handy test. Would David Brent say it?

Yes = corporate wankspeak

No = not corporate wankspeak

Are you a train driver?

Yes, we know that. The term becomes corporate wankspeak when people start using it out of its proper context. Same goes for 'assets'.

It is hilarious when we have a work Zoom with the corporate side and design team..

Imagine 8 skilled experts in the service they're selling, we deal with users, giving them the advice they need, we aren't execs, we aren't design nerds, we do NOT do this business wank-speak, at all. It is a foreign language to us.

Then the others start it up and there are 8 blank faces, repeatedly having to ask for them to explain themselves every. single. time

You can see them start to falter as they speak, confidence in the utter wank that falls out of their faces starts to fade, stumbling and back tracking as it dawns on them the stupidity of the words coming out of their mouths, just how ridiculous it all sounds.

Might be that some of us find this so funny we do it on purpose when we do actually know what they mean.

So they can, but it is wanky for them to be described as such rather than calling them what they actually are, especially by people who don't work in the finance department.

No. it is not exclusive to finance. I have only ever used it in terms of creating libraries of - well - assets - for companies. If I am describing what has been included in the data library, I am NOT going to say images, documents, videos, pdfs. I am going to call them assets. Maybe a technical expression such as assets is offensive to some. For me, and other colleagues, it is a word that means many items kept in the same place. What would you call them as a collective name?

Let’s take it off line is what I always say when I want to stop an argument / heated discussion snowballing in a meeting. If anyone knows a better phrase let me know!

The advisory group tells the steering group what to talk about. The steering group tells the advisory group what they've decided, and the advisory group tells them to go back and talk about it all over again. And repeat, ad infinitum. The steering group then decides to go with whatever it was they decided in the first place.

The steering group tells the working group what needs to be done, and the working group tells the steering group it won't work properly like that, so they need to discuss it with the advisory group once more. The steering group tells the working group they've already done that, and that this is the best thing ever.

After months of futile back and forth, the steering group tells the working group what they want to happen, and the working group passes it all over to the poor bastards who have to actually do the work.

Simples.

@WiddlinDiddlin surely though, there’s ridiculous design speak from your team too. You know there’s a whole - very silly - language of design too.

Words can be part of industry terminology but still sound wanky and ridiculous. I went to a brand launch thingy recently where the presenter kept referring to company logos as “assets”. I get that the intellectual property in the logos have value and are assets, but when presenting to a wider audience why not just call them logos.

Can you give an example? I’m struggling to picture this. So they say “please reach out to X to blue sky this further” and you (with a straight face) pretend you don’t know what they mean? I quite like the idea but it does sound really odd.

It's an accurate enough phrase in the context of a zoom meeting.

I work in marketing and come across every single one of these daily in our deep dives and stand ups! A lot of ‘unpacking’ of ideas too. I do use ‘assets’ myself though!

Musicians. Meaning to seamlessly move from one piece of music to another, like when a band goes from one song to the next without stopping in between.

Ah, thanks. Yes, that sounds like a legitimate use.

To me “asset” means something very specific, as in IT asset management. There’s also the obvious financial meaning.

I’ve never heard it used for miscellaneous files in a library. Fancy calling some marketing jpegs “assets” 🤭

I can’t comment on this thread I’m laughing to much 😂😂😂😂

The world has an over population policy. Anyone using these terms should be disposed of, along with the diversity champions eating up your lunch times demanding we are all an ally to their pet project which is of no interest to the majority of people who rock up to work to do nothing more than earn some money in exchange for applying their skills