My wife's workplace is notorious for using stupid business expressions at every meeting, like 'Blue sky thinking' and 'thinking outside the box' etc.

There is one person in particular who seems to use them every single time she opens her mouth, so my wife and her fellow employees thought it would be funny to compile the biggest list they could come up with of such terms, and present them in a book for her at her upcoming 40th birthday.

So I wondered whether the forum could help me contribute a decent stack of them - doesn't matter how obvious or commonly used they are, let's see how many we can come up with

I've already provided two, so I'll kick the list off with those:

1. Blue sky thinking
2. Thinking outside the box

Any more?

Google '[alliterative four letter term for masturbatory activity] words' bingo

Hope that's not 'pushing the envelope' for forum decorum

I think we can really engage with this - let's run it up the flag pole and see who salutes.

Hopefully it will facilitate the actualization of your on-going project if, moving forward, myself and others themselves can provide a brain-dump as a deliverable.

If that matches your expectations of this project then please confirm, ASAP as, time-wise, we're looking at a tight schedule and we're going to need to utilize all of our resource to hit your deadline.

At the end of the day our shared vision here is a cost-effective collaborative project which can deliver a package to surprise and delight your end-client and help drive a real partnership between you.

I'm vacationing next week, but if you need my input then I'll be on my Blackberry, so feel free to message me to discuss further.

Looking forward to a successful outcome,

Andrew

We seem to 'articulate' things a lot, instead of just saying them. We also need to remain 'cognisant' of things a lot, rather than just remembering them or being aware of them.

I work in oil and gas and there's no end of TLAs (there's one now, look at the little bugger go) and business bullshit.

How can a single word term be alliterative?

Anyway, I think 'bullshit bingo' will also do the job and I think that even gets by the censorbot.

My boss is one of these (although he's clearly a beginner from what I've already read above).
However:-
Going forward
Harvesting the low hanging fruit
Proactive

are 3 of his favourites.

We are where we are
It is what it is
Let's take stock and then move forward

Good work, people. Now let's get all of our ducks in a row and make sure we're all singing from the same hymn sheet.

This is a genuine extract from an email sent by a former CEO where I work:

"The organisational change at Workplace PLC follows a significant strategic planning process
recently undertaken across our global business. That process produced a heightened clarity on our
business priorities for the next five years. Front and centre of the strategy is a commitment to global
leadership in the provision of education pathways that deliver superior career outcomes for our
students. This is predicated on partnering with leading universities to deliver higher education access
and partner programs and the provision of our own quality career education programs."

I literally couldn't make it up.

Clearly a result-driven end-to-end mission.

Try this bunch of clowns for a whole dictionary. Don't laugh too loudly, though - they are managing my pay!

http://www.agile-1.com/

As an aside, I'd say that it can be - although obviously a single syllable word cannot be on its own. However, on this occasion I was referring to its relation with the second word within the same speech marks.

I do appreciate your 'reaching out', though

What fun

I can only see a win-win scenario here.

A new favourite at my work used to describe RFCs that we can deliver for quick wins..... the 'oven ready chicken'.

Customer focused deliverable

I'm sorry sir, but you've already had enough to drink.....

Leveraging our synergies

My mothers boss is always saying

One team, one goal

then sits in his office all day doing sweet F.A

I'll 'PING' it over to you

Smoke me a kipper. I'll be home for breakfast

My all time favourite one after a successful afternoon meeting.

Job and knock today boys ! 10 hours later we were still at it.

I must confess, earlier today I found myself using the expression "we could fly a kite" when talking to my boss.

It wasn't even in the context of the two of us spending some quality time together, in a park by a lake, being entertained by a flimsy airbourne toy.

Absolutely, and the best bit is that everyone is the 'customer' so therefore require a meeting to understand if the "ask" has been understood.

There's a lot to put together now so who's getting the task of doing the heavy lifting? An American colleague of mine actually used that in a customer meeting a few years ago and I had to really bite my lip to stop bursting out laughing at him.

Of course, it's not all down to one person, to get it done properly we need to remember that there's a "you" and "I" in quality.

There's no "I" in team either, I've always wanted someone to use that one so I could reply with, 'No, but there's a "u" in <insert 4 letter word referring to female genitalia that has a "u" as it's second letter>'
I probably wouldn't though, I reckon anyone sad enough to pull that one out doesn't have any form of a sense of humour whatsoever.

One that attracted much laughter and derision in a meeting last week; "now we're laying pipe" which is supposed mean we're making progress

"Laying pipe" must be the same as "creating traction" but without the defectory reference.

I used to work with a right idiot who used to look at us all with an earnest furrow to his brow and ask if we were "comparing apples with apples?"

any flexible solution would be:
"a chocolate box"

and any solution that wasn't bulletproof would be:
"the lipstick on the pig/gorilla/whatever.

Personally anyone that comes up to me and says "we work hard, play hard" better make sure they say it outside punching distance.

Whilst attending a training course in Switzerland, the Swiss trainer, (who had just returned from America) was falling over himself to share this gem with us and even wrote it on the obligatory white board in case we didn't grasp it; Never assume, it can make an ASS out of U and ME…no one even smirked if I remember rightly, a great David Brent moment.

I came up with my very own saying today at work; in a meeting about a strategy paper I had written for our team

"better to going into the boss having lopped off your arm and re-positioned already, rather than to be told to cut it off and stick it somewhere!"

What was I smoking - LOL

In plain English, we should show that we have thought about tightening out belt and re-organizing rather than asking for more and getting a kicking.

Ha, that brings back memories - my very first boss told me that one.

We mainly "focus on outcomes" and are a "yes if" organisation. We also focus on "partnerships with external and internal customers"

If you sprinkle 100's and 1000's on shit, it's still shit.