Thursday, September 13, 2007

Corp Speak Alert, edition 2

Come, let's journey down Corporate Etymology Way again. Lately I've been hearing:

Machine: an organization's structure and processes, writ large. E.g.: "We need to fix our machine if we want to get this done."

Siloes: over-specialization among departments. Indicates a need for better communication and even overlaps among departments. E.g.: "Let's tell everyone about the change in this department; we don't want siloes about something so important." Note: this one is so well built into our lexicon where I work that it only just occured to me to think it strange and share it.

Fred has an East Cost update:

Flow-Down: a report communicating decisions from upper-mgt to the rest of the team. E.g.: "Today's flow-down includes the following..."

My final word is a little bit separate from the others because I know its source exactly and there's only one manager here who really abuses it (and I adore her, so this has no bearing on who she is).
Arranger: from the book Now Build Your Strengths, it is defined thusly: "People strong in the Arranger theme can organize, but they also have a flexibility that complements this ability. They like to figure out how all of the pieces and resources can be arranged for maximum productivity." The manager who learned this as one of her 5 strengths has been running with it ever since - now everything is a product of her Arranger strength, from coming up with creative ideas, her interest in staff perks, or just pulling a meeting together, and if you do the same, then you must be an Arranger too! I particularly like this one, though, because I keep hearing it as "A Ranger," and I think of her tromping through the woods in a Park Ranger outfit, helping the trees to organize their leaves and giving the woodland creatures assignments and words of encouragement...

1 comment:

  1. Oh yeah, I get a lot of the Build Your Strengths speak and tons of Siloes too. How about these for your corporate lexicon (corp-icon...or lexirate?):

    Parking Lot - "Good thought, but let's put that in the parking lot for now." Origins: Six Sigma term to mean "tabling" an issue, or taking it "offline", raised at a meeting to "circle back" to for future discussion at a different time. Oh sweet lord, I just used corporate speak to define corporate speak. I've received a language labotomy...and then got a raise.

    Speak - n. meaning a voice communication. Actual neausea inducing sentence spoken to me, "Are you still on for a 4pm speak with Ms. Quinley?" What is this, a bad late eighties stockbroker movie?

    Fill The Bucket - a derivative of the previously House-defined term Bucket to mean budgetary classifications. Fill the bucket activities are business initiatives with the aim of fulfilling particular budgetary obligations...filling that bucket. Oftem meant as activities beyond normal business operations and beyond typical revenue sources.

    Oh my, there are so many...getting dizzy...

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