Buzzwords. Love them or hate them but they are omnipresent and running amok.

A buzzword is a word or phrase that becomes very popular for a period of time, often outworn, superseded or evolving with time.

Buzzwords often originate in jargon, acronyms or neologisms. No area of our lives is immune to buzzwords (general conversation, social media, work, business – especially marketing and sales, education, science and technology, and politics).

While buzzwords are often maligned and ridiculed as a communications travesty, they are nonetheless ingrained in our “word speak”.

Buzzwords can be extremely annoying, especially when overused, and often tend to confuse, rather than clarify. According to management professor Robert Kreitner, “Buzzwords are the literary equivalent of Gresham’s Law. They will drive out good ideas.”

Often buzzwords attempt to be important-sounding but can have little meaning, although they are routinely used to impress others (resulting in the playing of the game “Buzzword bingo” by bored and bemused audiences).

However, buzzwords aren’t all bad. They can be useful shorthand or internal shortcuts that make perfect sense to a particular group or community (a tribal vocabulary). Clearly they can be a prop to get attention or attempt to focus attention on a particular issue. They can be useful for establishing a “personal brand”. Buzzwords can be revealing, and sometimes they are just downright funny or cute. Infectious.

So now to reach out, push the envelope, run up the flag pole and bring to the table some buzzword classics to make you laugh or cringe:

  • Decruiting: Current euphemism for firing people.
  • Eating your own dog food: Using a product yourself that you sell to others.
  • Psychic income: The satisfaction derived from your job, usually a substitute for money.
  • Mushroom management: A management technique that keeps employees in the dark.
  • MEGO effect: The impact on an audience by an inept presenter: “My eyes glazed over.”
  • Golden retriever: A cash bonus that lures a retired business executive back into an active business role.
  • Boil the ocean: To undertake an impossible task or project, or to make a task or project unnecessarily difficult.
  • Eyebrow management: Arms-length management style where a top executive can stop a course of action by the slightest hint of disapproval.

July 2015