The Rod Jones Guide to Business and Management Speak
A Guide for Newcomers to the Wonderful World of Marketing and Business who thought that they only needed English to get by..
- with added Art Pretentiousness, Menu Twaddle and PR speak
As a retired member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing with a long career in Sales and Marketing behind me, I have set out to give something back to newcomers to management with this essential guide to Business Speak.
Since its introduction in 2002, it has shot to the top of the Google Search Engine and has been very favourably received by many Marketing professionals who have e-mailed me with the latest examples of top expressions used by their peers to demonstrate a leading edge understanding of management speak.
Warning.
If you are in Marketing, don't try and impress the general public with your grasp of marketing jargon by using it in interviews on the radio or TV - it doesn't really make you sound like an expert at all.
A spokesperson for the Cumbrian tourist board once informed Radio 4 Today listeners that it was a shame that an outbreak of Legionnaires disease in Barrow in Furness coupled with torrential rain had blighted the Blairs' holday there because "Cumbria has got some wonderful brands".
"Er..Brands? What are those?" asked John Humphrys.
"Er... the Lake District and er... the Lake District". replied the spokesperson.
....Perhaps "places" would have been a better technical term for a Tourist Board spokesperson to use
This is page one of six indispensable pages highlighting some of the more essential terms needed to claw your way up the greasy pole of business.
About
As in "its about empowerment" - "Its about downsizing" .This is really media speak which sometimes creeps into meetings. It's about making the double quotes sign with the first two fingers of each hand as you say profound things, its about knowing what it's about and letting everyone know that you know. (What it's about)
Ball park
American stadium.To be in the ballpark means to be in the rough area in terms of an estimated price or assumption. Using US Business Speak demonstrates that you are a true trans-national player.
Barriers to Entry
Something which Business Analysts like to evaluate, barriers to entry are the ways in which a company can stop competition flooding the market with me-too products or services.
Drug dealers favour Uzzis, Lawyers have Bar exams, Marketing people have Business speak and the Financial Times likes the more feeble-minded management wannabe to think that not reading the FT will prevent him from saying something pithy and wise to the Chairman in the lift :- "No FT - No Comment".If this slogan had any grain of truth, taxi cabs the length and breadth of the country would be awash with copies of the FT.
"No FT - No Comment".
If this slogan had any grain of truth, taxi cabs the length and breadth of the country would be awash with copies of the FT
Bench marking
Any improvement needs a basis for comparison. A weight watcher uses the weight at which the diet was started as a Bench Mark.
A bench mark is actually an arrow carved into a stone to show the height of a view point above sea level. They are used by the Ordnance Survey for the purposes of making maps and can be seen at viewpoints such as the Worcestershire beacon.
A bench mark is not to be confused with a skid mark which is a phenomenon frequently found in the laundry business.
Best practice
Something to which a procedure should conform .
What is always unclear is who defines what is best practice?
Answer: The person defending the shoddy performance of his company or government department.
Bottom Line
As in "it goes straight to the bottom line". It's the bottom line of the profit and loss account.
Things that go to the bottom line add to the company's profit.
Things that come out of the bottom line are unbudgetted expenses which detract from profitability.
Not to be confused with things that come out of the bottom (See skid mark.)
Bandwidth
Lovely techy phrase meaning "time". e.g. "I'm sorry, Alistair, but I don't have the bandwidth on this one".
In reality, users of this term find something too difficult, trivial or expensive.Implying that it requires something as technical and complicated as "bandwidth" helps to get them off the hook.
Blamestorming
Frequently diguised as a project review, this is an impromptu gathering to try and establish who or what is to blame for the project going pearshaped.
Business Model
You need to achieve convincing mastery of this MBA-speak term if you are to hold your own in discussions with the Chairman in the lift or washroom.
In the bad old days before Business Speak, people didn't have business models, they only had Lego or Airfix and just created vast business empires without models.
- Now everyone has a business model.
Even the oldest profession has business models according to an interesting debate I heard on the subject of licensing of brothels where one of the speakers used the concept of business models to describe whether the girls were "sole traders", "cooperatives" or "managed assets".
Sometimes business models are a great source of admiration - until they go wrong.
Northern Rock managed to build up a huge book of mortgages and were universally admired by the financial press for the efficient way in which they did it. Suddenly their depositors panicked and the business model was denounced as being deeply flawed by the same business pundits and share tipsters who had only the previous week rated Northern Rock shares as a "Buy".
"In the bad old days before Business Speak, people didn't have business models, they only had Lego or Airfix and just created vast business empires without models. "
(C) Rod Jones - All Rights Reserved
If I have inadvertently missed out one of your particular favourite examples of Newspeak,
email me
Page 2
"Call Centre" to "Envisioneering"
Page 3
"Excremental to "Metrics"
Page 4
"Mindset" to "Oven Ready"
Page 5
"Piece, Across the" to "World Class"
