Thursday 18 October 2012

Buzzword Bingo



I hate meetings.  Despise them.  And I don’t mean one-off meetings that you have when meeting somebody for the first time.  I’m talking about the recurring meetings that would pop up in my calendar in my previous life when I was in full-time work.  The Monday morning meeting.  The Wednesday afternoon meeting.  And then the Friday meeting.  They drove me insane.  I know I’m not alone when I say that these kinds of meetings are, for the most part, tedious and pointless.  I read once that some people would conduct their meetings standing up, which I thought was pure genius!

In a galaxy far, far away, when I worked in recruitment, there was a game that went around called Buzzword Bingo.  I don’t recall having ever actually played this game, but in my head, anytime I heard a buzzword or buzzphrase I would make a mental note of it.  Words or phrases such as:

  • Cherry picking;
  • Moving forward;
  • Take that offline;
  • Slippery slide
  • Deliverable;
  • Quals;
  • Touch base.

The list is endless and can vary from industry to industry. Whatever industry you're in, there was a perception that if you used these words, you were...how do you say it.  Well, you were considered a bit of a wanker.  And seriously – I wish somebody had actually provided bingo cards in our meetings, I think I would have paid more attention.

Re-entering the workforce and having some meetings recently, I found myself going to use some of these buzzwords and being physically unable to get them out of my mouth.  On the fly, I replaced “touch base” (which is what I went to say) with “give you a call”.

But the buzzword bingo of yesterday would be vastly different today, surely.  All my bingo words would date me back to when Friends was on TV every Tuesday night at 7:30pm.

So could you please enlighten me.  What are the buzzword/phrases of today?

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