Bullshit bingo - things corporate whores say, and why

Most of us will work, at some point, with some version of the Corporate Whore. Not to be confused with the Office Bike (everyone gets a ride) - the Corporate Whore takes things far more seriously. The job is everything to them, and as a result, they come out with some ridiculous corporate-speak which becomes more acronym-infested the longer they've been in their role.

Dan and I have worked in lots of offices where this drivel gradually infects everyone in middle management, until underlings are driven so crazy by it that meetings become a subversive opportunity for Bullshit Bingo. The rules are simple: participants are allocated 10 corporate phrases at random, and the first person to complete a full-house wins.

Here are some choice morsels:

Environment = office/team

Can you action that? = do it

Action that urgently = do it now

Add value = do useful stuff

The process = the stuff we're working on/ the way we work on stuff

Just to give you a heads up= I'm about to tell you something juicy

The journey has been amazing = doing the stuff we did was hard

Can you cascade that = tell those guys this stuff

Feed it back to the team = tell them it was shit

No need to reinvent the wheel= your new idea is shit

Bottom line/basically/at the end of the day = our whole meeting is about to be summed up by my next 5 words. Aren't you pleased it's taken us an hour and a half to get here?

I heard you say = you said (I'm being non-confrontational because I'm a consultant)


So why do the CWs feel the need to communicate this way? And does it make them any better at their jobs? The short answer: it depends what kind of CW you're dealing with.

1. The Sloping Shoulders - this CW uses jargon and corporate speak to avoid responsibility. Tasks are "out of her project's scope" - she's "maxed right now" and she will write without ever using a personal pronoun: "The FIGP will be actioned and reviewed on a bi-monthly basis". (The Nazis did this, too.) She'll spend a lot of time on "social media research" (Facebook.)

2. The Seagull - swoops in, makes a lot of noise, craps all over everything, and flies out again. A keen proponent of "actioning", "feeding back", "top down approaches", "best in breed projects" - all ways of slagging you off and dumping work on you in so breathtakingly passive-aggressive a way that you won't know what's hit you until it's too late.

3. The Consultant - quite the best user of jargon. Consultants do it to justify their fees (they are cleverer than you, and this is their way of showing you). They also do it to avoid offending volatile characters - you should add this to your arsenal. Why demand something be done, when you can request action? Why challenge someone's idea, when you can repeat it back to them so they can hear their own stupidity and correct themselves? We can learn a lot about the language of office politics from the Consultant.

4. The Utter Tosser - you know if you're dealing with this one. Can be combined with other types. Watch your back - and always plan for the Worst Case Scenario around them. Especially if they're your boss.