Whaddaya hear, whaddya say? Welcome to episode 21 of the Career Consigliere podcast: your no frills, no BS forum for navigating the corporate job scene. Jimmy with you, once again for what we hope to be a highly informative and engaging half an hour, or so! Today, we take a break from the serious stuff to poke fun at corporate life. Yes, today we’ll be making fun of some commonly used jargon, some phrases and figures of speech you frequently hear out there in kingdom corporatopia. We’ll talk about that they are, what they mean, and how they’re used. And in the spirit of these quirky sayings, we’ll also talk about how you can use them to strategically convey your true feelings and opinions at the office to make sure you stand your ground without getting swept up in the corporate matrix. Should be a fun one today, Podcast land: letttsss get it!
Corporatopians: you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about when I say “corporate jargon”. It’s those old cliches you hear around the office people use in meetings and other conversations where they need to be more buttoned up. You don’t usually hear them in the cafeteria, at the water cooler, and in the parking lot. These are things you hear all the time in slightly more formal conversations when someone is trying to get their message across and think of a relatable (and completely played out and beat-to-death) example to use. It’s a case of monkey see , monkey do: we’ve all heard these phrases and metaphors so many times that, no matter how much we can’t stand them, no matter dumb we think they are, no matter how much their utterance resembles the scream of a toddler in a supermarket, we use them anyway.......because we simply can’t help it. They’ve been steadily programmed into our subconscious during all the “touch point” meetings, one-on-ones, and quarterly reviews that we’ve all been subjected to hundreds of times over. And until we reach 59 ½ years old, we’ve no choice but to accept them, since they’re not going away anytime soon. So if you can’t beat em? Join em! Let’s at least accept it and poke some serious fun at these asinine sayings that couldn’t do a childhood nursery rhyme poetic justice. There are WAY too many of these things for a single podcast episode, but we’re going to focus on the most well-known, ultra cringy ones for you. A lot of these come from my own experience, with some assistance from a 2023 article in Techtarget, and you can find the link in the episode description if you want to get the full experience. Let’s get into it!
Up first: “Low hanging fruit”! This refers to low-effort tasks that yield quick and productive results. For example: you’re a financial analyst and you have to reconcile 5 different ledgers. You realize that Phil down the hall has an Excel sheet with a macro that can automate the process, so you partner up with him, get your super-cool spreadsheet tool working, and bang out these 5 reports in one shot. Low-hanging fruit. This was #1 on my personal list, and I’m glad it was also mentioned in the article, because in my opinion it’s the most outlandish and snicker worthy. Anytime someone says it, I imagine them riding safari through the jungle, wearing one of those stupid hats with the camouflage plant leaves on top, picking bananas and mangos off the trees. I always loved when it was someone I didn’t like who said it, because then I got to imagine them looking like they belong in the next Jumanji movie, and getting attacked by the saber toothed tiger before the Rock could bail them out. Don’t like someone? Just imagine them eating a banana......is that NOT hilarious?
Next, another thorn in my side: “circle back”. Usually you hear this when it comes to setting up meetings and all that. “Oh, let me circle back with Jeff on where things stand with the space planning program. I’ll set something up for us to discuss next week”. Um, why are we circling? Isn’t talking in circles usually a bad thing? If we’re going round, and round, aren’t we covering the same old ground and not moving forward? I mean think about it: you spreadsheet nerds out there: ever tried running an excel formula that references itself? You get one of those nasty error messages with the exclamation point thing that says “circular reference warning”. Even the grand daddy of the corporate toolbelt doesn’t like circles. Circle back......I imagine the speaker looking off into space and just drawing circles with their finger, because that’s about as effective as this dumb phrase is in conversation. I can safely say I’ve never uttered these words myself: trying to keep that streak going!
Another one: “in the weeds”! I guess this one has multiple meanings, because the article simply defines it as being overwhelmed with work. Not sure if any of you have heard it used in that context, because I’ve always heard it used to refer to getting too caught up in details and getting sidetracked from the main message or topic of the conversation. Ever been presenting slides in a meeting, when someone gets obsessed with the chart on slide 6 and starts lighting you up with questions on how you calculated the numbers, have you shown this to the team in Canada yet, should we add John McPherson into this meeting to get his thoughts? THAT’s getting down into the weeds. I’ll give this one some Creedence: while I hate the saying itself, I think the metaphor it uses is actually pretty accurate. Think about it: when you landscape your yard, the whole idea is to get rid of the weeds, right? You take away the ugly boring stuff so you can showcase the nice flowers and pretty stuff you actually planted and have to maintain. If we focus too much on the weeds, the stuff that doesn’t matter, then we miss the bigger picture. But anytime someone has said this in front of me, I always imagined the person getting down and slithering through high grass in someone’s yard (dressed in their nice corporate clothes): hilarious visual you can use when someone cuts you off mid-presentation to ask about stupid, pointless crap.
Another one....”deep dive”! This one usually comes up when you’re already in conversation about something, when someone identifies a particular aspect of whatever you’re talking about and wants to “explore that further”. Usually the “deep dive” manifests as another meeting being set up to focus on this one, very specific, niche topic......and usually results in many more highly productive and fruitful meetings where you spend hours splitting hairs and, if you’re lucky, coming up with a few more slides to that’ll go die somewhere on a Share Point. But I will admit, there are definitely certain topics that warrant a closer look, and I’ve been in a lot of situations where one of these “deep dives” actually helped me prevent other problems before they started, so they definitely have their place. But I just imagine everybody in the room in speedos wearing swimmers caps and those tiny coke-bottle goggles kneeling on their own respective diving boards in perfect unison. Try that next time you’re in a conference room with a bunch of macho baracho corporate people: hopefully nobody notices you smirking!
Up next, “hard stop”. Oh, this one happens ALL the time. This one is used when you have a meeting that ends at say, 3pm, and you have another meeting scheduled to START at 3pm. It implies that you have no margin to spare if the current meeting runs over the scheduled time. Gotta love this one: if you want my opinion, this one’s a symptom of an epidemic in corporatopia: the unbalanced, overbooked schedule. SOOO many of you listening know this all too well: you spend your day going from meeting to meeting, most of which are poorly organized and accomplish very little, where the main takeaway could been more effectively conveyed in a simple, 5-sentence email. A LOT of people out in corporatopia are absolutely ABYSMAL when it comes to time management, and their calendar is packed with meetings that are nothing more than hot air sessions. And it gets worse the higher up the ladder you go: as you advance in your career, expect the BS factor to steadily rise with you, and with that comes the ever-pressing obligation to be involved in meetings that are complete wastes of time. And guess what you’ll be doing? You’ll be starting off the meeting by greeting everyone with “hey, just letting everyone know that I have a hard stop at 3!”. Translation? “Hey, this meeting is nowhere near as important as my next one, so give me all you got for the next 30 minutes, and then you’re on your own, because I’m going to forget everything you said anyway”.
And the not-so-distant cousin of the hard stop? “Let’s take this offline”. This earful of corporate jargon is used whenever time is growing short in a formal meeting, and a sidebar topic comes up that could easily bring everyone down a rabbit hole and derail the original focus of the conversation. My GOD! Listen to me! There were at least two, and arguably three, ADDITIONAL corporate jargon phrases I just used to describe another. Madone! That’s when you know you’re shot: clearly my time in the corporate world has scarred me for life – what can I say. But “let’s take this offline” can be your best friend: it’s probably the most polite and socially acceptable way of essentially telling someone to “shut the hell up”, when they’re being rude and trying to hijack the meeting by shifting the focus onto their own interests and agenda. Every company has people that have to be the loudest and proudest in the room, so even though you’ll feel like a robot saying it, ‘Hey Scott, let’s take this offline” can really bail you out of an annoying situation before the bullpens empty and the corporate royal rumble breaks out.
Next on the list, “pain point”. You hear this one a lot when you’re talking about processes and efficiency, and it’s used to describe something that’s usually a nagging issue that causes frustration for the people involved. For example: a CRM system that constantly freezes up and crashes would be a real “pain point” for the salesperson that needs to log their notes from that day’s visits. Not a whole lot of double entendre or mystery on this one: it speaks for itself. I always imagined the person complaining about the pain point getting up slowly out of their chair and clutching their lower back, complaining how they need to go back to the chiropractor again – even the word “chiropractor” gets uttered so frequently around the office you could probably consider THAT to be corporate jargon in itself! Sitting down all day is TREACHEROUS for the human spine: corporatopians are the ones that keep chiropractors in business. Cringeworthy on so many levels.
Next on the list, we’ve got “drill down”. You hear this one come up a lot when it comes to analyzing data, “let’s drill down to the product code level”, you hear it a lot when you’re dealing with pricing, especially when you work for the kind of company that sells a lot of physical products. All it refers to is analyzing something more in-depth. I imagine a bunch of people wearing welders masks and drilling through the computer screen: because usually that’s what I want to do when someone says utters this phrase! I remember the first time I heard this used: it was in my very first corporate job. And the person who said it was a lifelong data analyst: she was probably in her late 40s at the time, and it was painfully obvious she had done nothing but deal with SKU numbers since the day she graduated: she had the personality to go with it. She was one of those people who worked for the company for a million years and you could tell her whole identity was tied to that corporation: despite not really earning much in the way of promotions or respect in her 25+ year career. We all hated price changes because we were all rookies and none of us knew how to do v-lookups yet, but this one would light up like a christmas tree at whenever price change season came, because it meant she got to play with speadsheets and show everyone how badass her pivot tables were. They were pretty impressive, I won’t lie, but there you have it: she was the type to “drill down” into stuff, and unfortunately that’s what I think of whenever I hear that term.
Next one: “above my paygrade!” This one’s a classic happy hour term. People aren’t happy with upper management for whatever reason, they throw in the towel, and they say “these decisions are above my paygrade”. Translation: I’m burnt out on this topic, and we’re going to let the people at the top worry about it. It actually has some wisdom in it, and I’ll admit, I’ve used variations of this myself. Although, you guys know me, I always threw in some sarcasm. I’d say something like “well, that’s why they pay me $18 million a year to worry about these things”. I actually don’t mind this one, because if you’re using it, you understand that certain things are beyond your control in a corporation. A LOT of people in the corporate world get WAY too invested and emotional in things they have absolutely no control over. And I’m not trying to take anything away from them: you can gain some fantastic experience in the corporate world, I definitely have. But I think sometimes people get a bit too wrapped up in the company’s mission: they get too far down “in the weeds” (there, I did it again) and they take their eyes off the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is that you’re working for someone else’s company: you’re helping profligate someone else’s dream, you’re (literally) making someone else rich. A lot of people gain personal fulfillment from their work, and that’s okay if it’s done within reason (wayyy to many people overdo it). But, based on all my experience, the most well-rounded and overall happy corporatopians are the ones who know when to fight the battles, and when to just go with the flow: the most successful ones are the ones who understand when something is truly “above their paygrade”.
And finally....the number one, and my all-time favorite: “Drinking the Kool-aid”! Let’s put it this way: the people who use “above my paygrade”, would probably never actually “drink the kool-aid”. This term refers to someone who blindly believes and follows whatever they’re told, even when it’s questionable. The term actually has its roots in cult practices: back in 1978, the “Jonestown Massacre” happened when a cult leader convinced almost 1,000 people to move to a commune in Guyana. I’m not here to give you lesson on cult life (there’s a million documentaries you can watch on the streaming channels if you want that), but from the way I understand it, he convinced his followers that the Guyanese military was going to take their children away. So, as a way of preventing this, they all drank fruit punch (maybe it was actually Kool-aid, I’m not sure), laced with cyanide......and that was all, folks.
The corporate world has a way of using their branding to try to build a common purpose and create a sense of identity and belonging amongst its employees. And some of them do a fantastic job of it. But any company that’s really serious about this always has a few people that take it WAY too far. If you want a great example of this, watch the movie “Waiting”. HILARIOUS movie, with an all-star cast (all star from the early 2000s anyway). It’s about a bunch of people who work in a restaurant, and I could go on all day about this movie, because it’s one of my all-time favorites, being a 7-year veteran in the foodservice industry. But there’s one character in the movie who’s absolutely pathetic. He’s unsure of himself, has NO game with the ladies at all, and he just gets completely used and abused by everybody at this restaurant. The “Kool aid” at this restaurant was a catchphrase that goes “the difference between ordinary and extraordinary, is that little extra”. And this character, whose name is Calvin, goes around the place reciting it out loud while he’s working in hopes of landing a promotion, even though it’s obvious he stands no chance. Now that’s just a movie, but it really depicts how some people get WAY too wrapped up in the mindset of the company they’re working for, almost to the point of being brainwashed as a cult follower would. You’ve seen them, you know who they are.
So there you go, people. Some of the most annoying, and some of the best expressions of corporate jargon. Not a real serious episode today, but I’d never let you off the hook without first giving you a good ol’.......consigliere call to action. All these sayings exist because people, deep down, want to be able to express themselves. And in professional settings, you usually can’t do this, at least not as freely as you’d like to. If your manager is a reasonable human being, you have a decent relationship with them, and it’s just the two of you in the room, or on the call, then you can be more candid and direct. But when you’re in a meeting, or when you’re in some other kind of situation where multiple people and multiple interests are present, you have to censor the living hell out of what you say and do to make sure you’re not putting your own reputation, or any sensitive situations, at risk.
For example, if you’re frustrated about a go-nowhere project, you might tell your boss directly “Look Maria, this project is total BS: it’s a waste of time, I can’t understand why we’re doing it, nobody except Scott and his team care about it, and the whole thing needs to just go away”. If it’s just the two of you, and you have enough trust and credibility built up, you’re probably okay saying that...once in a while. Don’t make a habit out of it, but a good leader will be a pal and let you vent here and there. But if you’re in a planning meeting about this project with the Business Unit director and some other interested parties, to express the exact same thing you’d have to start hitting them with the corporate mumbo jumbo. You’d have to say something like, “we’ve been getting a lot of pushback on this project. We have concerns about bandwidth to support this going forward, the direction is unclear, and based on the feedback we’re getting there are a lot of opportunity areas. The initiative might need a second look.”
Same exact message, just worded in a much more constructive and politically correct manner. And look at ALL the jargon we used to do it: I count at least 4 mumbo jumbo sayings, none of which were even covered in this episode. We heard pushback, bandwidth, going forward, and opportunity. I won’t translate each one for you, you have a pretty good idea by now how corporate jargon goes. And you guys know me: listen to 30 seconds of my content and you can tell immediately that I’m a VERY down-to-earth and direct person. So playing jargon jenga in the workplace like this always really bothered me. But it’s just a part of corporate life, and if we want the paycheck, the bonus, the 401-K match, the PTO days, and the corporate credit card, we have to be chameleons and blend in at times: when in Rome, right?
But when you do this, make sure you stay true to yourself as best as you can. Simply use this ridiculous corporate lingo to weave your true feelings and thoughts into a cleverly crafted, professional message. Just because you can’t always use four-letter words in the office doesn’t mean you have to completely sell out and get lost in the matrix. The whole idea is to be tactful about it......and try to at least use the least cringy jargon you can: especially “circle back” – please, anything but that.
Sadly folks, that’s all the time we have for today. But have no fears, and shed no tears, because I’ll be back with a new episode every week. As they say in the industry: no listeners, no show, so do me a favor, and stay loyal! If you find value in my content, please leave me a nice review, tell all your friends, and don’t forget to like, subscribe, and follow on whatever platform you use to get your podcasts. Beyond the confines of your headphones, speakers, TV screen, or any other crazy contraption with the ability to stream audio, I also provide one-on-one career assistance, so visit my website at career-consigliere.net to learn more about me, book me for one-on-one coaching, join my email list, or explore some of the other career services I offer. And to all of you out there in podcast land, remember this: Who’s the boss in your career? You, nobody else.
