While we’re not entirely serious about having banned the words and phrases in
this humour piece, sometimes, words become tiresome, or silly, or just downright
annoying. Just remember, this is a joke. Except for paradigm. And dialoguing.
Oh, and World-Class. And…
Phrases “Officially” Banned from Nexbridge Documents
| Banned Phrase | Real Meaning | Ban Reason |
| Actionable | From legal lexicon referring to a situation that may result in legal action. |
When you show up at a project status meeting and the organizer says, “Please refer to the actionable items list”, and you don’t think “As opposed to the non-actionable items list?” you’re in Heck. |
| Bridging | Providing a previously unavailable means of interacting between two groups or places. |
Everyone these days is involved in bridging something; particularly bridging the gap between the clients’ Accounts Payable department and your Accounts Receivable department. Even we’re guilty of using this one. That’s how pervasive its use is. |
| Core Competencies | What we’re supposed to be good at because that’s our business. | What we think we’re supposed to be good at so that we can be perceived as being justified in employing the noble hatchet-person to remove everyone who actually produces stuff instead of increases stock activity. |
| Dialoguing | This isn’t a word. Dialog is a noun. It means conversation; discussion. | We need to dialog about going forward harnessing our impactful core competencies. Do you see anything wrong with this? |
| E-anything | Stick an e in front of anything an it means a computer is involved. |
eJust eOverused. eVery eOverused. |
| Follow-on | Uh. Something that follows something? | Another overused phrase. It’s not funny. It’s just tired. Let’s find a new one. Like aft-action. |
| Going Forward | From this point on. | When you’re talking about doing anything, isn’t this redundant? Can you see this in a meeting, “Going backward, we would have sold more, but we didn’t. So there. Wait. Then. Oh forget it.” |
| Harness | Use. Leash. Bridle. | See Leverage. |
| I-anything | Stick an i in front of anything an it means information is involved. |
iJust iOverused. iVery iOverused. |
| Impactful | This is an invented term derived from heavy impact. | After 160 million years, the dinosaurs’ management team probably invented this term. They were promptly hit with an extremely impactful comet. Remember that, the next time you think of using this term. |
| Leverage | To apply a small force over a large distance to move a disproportionately heavy object. |
As in “We seek to leverage our technology into new synergistic opportunities”. We’re sure this is meant to allow you to position yourself to be impactful. |
| Momentum | Or inertia. Somehow, we can’t see a CEO using the phrase visioning inertia. |
We must leverage our knowledge resources to achieve synergistic momentum. |
| Paradigm | A way of thinking. A unique conceptual framework. | This term was the first added to this list. We’re not even allowed to discuss it for fear of shareholder and employee retribution. |
| Quality | It’s supposed to be an adjective! | On its own, it has no real meaning in common parlance. As in “Our quality makes us last”. It’s worse when used as “Quality Management”. |
| Rightsizing | A new word taken to mean “We have too many people like you with bad hair. You’re fired.” |
We think the definition stands on its own. |
| Synergy | Independent developments leading to a common objective with permitting increased momentum. No really. We’re serious. |
With a word like this, you expected a definition that did not use banned words? |
| Utilize | Use. Just use “Use”. | Utilize an actionable stratagem; leveraging known variables; encompassing. Need we say more? |
| Visioning | The real word is envisioning even though this word is in some dictionaries now. So is dialoguing. Heaven help us. |
The act of creating a vision. The act of doing other things we can’t mention here. As in “We are entering the visioning phase of our corporate mission realization.” |
| World-class | Please forward a definition. Our best take is that it refers to New York, London, Tokyo, and those class cities. |
We’re going to utilize synergy to become a world-class company. Could you just die? |
| X-anything-without-the-E | There’s no meaning here. People just like making big X’s in front of their products. |
We just don’t like it. After spending all those years evaluating X-products, you’d be tired too. |
We are also close to adding anything with an “i” in front of it.
Please leave a comment to nominate another phrase.