Buzzwords in the Business, the Eighth 25 (176-200)

The calamity in the use of buzzwords is that they lack universal meaning (definition) and are seldom defined when first used. A manager uses them so that he will sound like his director who used them. A supervisor feels obligated to follow the example. Everyone may eventually be saying the same words but with different buzzword definitions. Hence, communication is greatly hampered.

Here is the eighth twenty-five of at least 200 contemporary buzzwords. Each is used in a sentence or followed by descriptive dialogue.

1. Politically charged - Mentioning transfers makes your entire conversation very politically charged
2. Prairie dog (in the cube farm) - Our loud laughter prompted our cube farm neighbors to prairie dog (stand up and look over the wall)
3. Process owners - If it doesn't work, then the process owners are at fault
4. Product shake-down - When you drive that car, do a complete product shake-down
5. Productivity-focused metrics - Productivity-focused metrics measure the key enablers to production efficiency
6. Promote accountability - Weekly project reviews will promote accountability among the troops
7. Pucker factor - Any questions not fully answered will create a pucker factor when the director visits
8. Pull out all the stops - They had to pull out all the stops to win the recognition award
9. Pull the plug on it - That project is no longer value-added so pull the plug on it
10. Push the button - Make sure the new budget is all-inclusive before you push the button
11. Quasi-approval - As long as the boss doesn't know about it, we have quasi-approval
12. Quasi-safe - No one has been hurt yet so it's quasi-safe
13. R.E.S.P.E.C.T.) - “Common courtesy - it's not so common anymore.” - Author unknown. So we must have an acronym: Rights and Responsibility, Equality, Standards of Success, Perception, Effort, Communication, Training.
14. Radar screen - The potential for error was not even on our radar screen
15. Ramp-up - Ramp-up the intensity until the assembly is complete
16. Recency of data - The value of your presentation is linked to the recency (freshness) of the data
17. Report on a dotted line - He works in the neighboring department but reports on a dotted line to our department's manager
18. Restructuring - This organization requires restructuring to become effective
19. Risk factors - Have you listed all the risk factors associated with making the data public?
20. Roadblocks - What are the roadblocks to getting complete buy-in?
21. Rocket science (not good) - We don't want to use rocket science to solve this problem
22. Role model - Very few employees are rated as a role model because most of us have imperfections in our work ethic
23. Root Cause Analysis - Perform root cause analysis to find the real culprits
24. Rosetta stone - The missing report could be the Rosetta stone of their data manipulation secrets
25. Rosy glasses - Sometimes we become protective and look at our employees through rosy glasses