How to torture your employee by using as much business jargon as possible

Dear Employee,

In looking through our core competencies and our core values, I recognize that we need to enhance stakeholder buy-in and empower your group specifically to take a deep dive into product development. You should consider focusing on the low hanging fruit. We have all taken a sip or two from the Kool-Aid and now it’s time to move the needle, open the Kimono, and make hay. I need you to think outside of the box, peel the onion back and study some best practices of competitors and look at the scalability of our work. It’s time to get our ducks in a row and take a hard look at our ecosystem. I think we can leverage what we have and really drill down and produce a robust service line. If you would like, we can take this offline to strategize and synergize our plans. I am free today with a hard stop at 3PM and out of pocket all next week. Lets not boil the ocean or punt this to our competitors. Time to take it to the next level, this is definitely our window of opportunity and I see it as cut and dry.

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Dear Boss,

I have no idea what you just said.

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Why your torture plan will surely backfire

Lets all finally admit this together. No one actually knows what any of these terms mean. They are annoying, confusing and obfuscating (see, I just used a word that most of us won’t know and what did it do? It made this whole thing annoying to read). Translation: these terms make things unclear and create obstacles in communication because while you are saying them, everyone else either 1) get’s stuck on the meaning 2) chuckles a bit or 3) stops listening. So, stop. Just stop.

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Maybe Try This Instead?

Use language that is easily understood and gets to the point, quickly. We are all so busy and overwhelmed in this world. Having to interpret stupid phrases just makes life a little more difficult. Also, clichés lose their meaning after awhile.

Be kind, rewind and dumb it down.