Defenestrate the reverbiagization!
It's things like this that lead me to believe that monkeys write management books. If anyone uses these words around me in a serious tone, they win a free smack upside the head. Except 'Tszuj', which the business-language-terrorists stole from a popular NBC show. It doesn't belong on the list, and corporate fat-cat types that love these inane terms wouldn't use it if they knew where it came from (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy).
Some gems:
-White Space Opportunity:
New high-potential growth possibilities that are related to but don't quite match the capabilities and skills of the organization.
(i.e. 'goals')
-Reverbiagize:
To reword a proposal with the hope of getting it accepted by people who didn't like it the first time around. As in: "It's the same concept, we've just reverbiagized it."
(i.e. 'fix' or 'reword')
-Repurposing:
Taking content from one medium (books, magazine, etc.) and repackaging it to be used in another medium.
(i.e. 'plagarism' or 'changing the presentation')
-Air Cover:
When a senior manager agrees to take the flak for an unpopular decision, while someone lower in the chain of command does the dirty work. As in: "The CFO will provide air cover, while you reduce staff by half." (A term borrowed from the military.)
(i.e. 'responsibility')
Now, we use them in a sentence:
Marketing has repurposed and reverbiagized their living documents relating to the whitespace opportunities of air cover.
(i.e. marketing is rewriting what they say about management responsibility goals)
You have no idea how much red my spell-checker put on this stuff.
Scott's Tips to Business:
1) Fire any consultants or employees using this terminology
2) Smaller words are easier to understand and take less toner to print, thereby reducing costs.
Luckily, the author of the aforementioned article takes a somewhat cynical stance on the whole Business-Language-Terrorism (BLT!) thing:
Corporate jargon and clichés are so pervasive that their use - or abuse - has yielded a buzzword of its own: "Deja Moo" (the feeling you've heard this bull before).
Deja Moo. I like that.
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