Let’s jilt the jargon for 2020!
No matter where you work, chances are you’ll have heard more than your fair share of business-related jargon being spouted during meetings. From ‘reinventing the wheel’ to ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ isn’t it about time we jilted the jargon and bring back plain English?
It’s probably fair to say that it’s us PR and marketing types who are often most guilty of using these annoying phrases. I recently surveyed the Skout team to discover the business jargon we think needs to be eradicated from the English language this year. Here are our top five (in no particular order):
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Thinking outside of the box
I’d like to know who’s thinking inside of the box? Secondly, who’s in charge of what should go in or outside of the box? Shouldn’t we just all just think a bit differently? Do we really need to involve the box at all?
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It’s not rocket science
No, it’s not, I think we all appreciate that PR probably isn’t as difficult as launching a rocket into space.
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Let’s touch base
Or, in other words, ‘let’s catch up later’ – where even is this base we need to touch?
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Thought shower
Firstly, we had to storm our brains, and now our thoughts are expected to fall like a shower! I’ll stick with the former is that’s ok.
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Low hanging fruit
It’s become a commonly used metaphor to describe a task that should be relatively easy to achieve, but do we really need a such a fancy way to say this?
Other words that narrowly escaped our top five list include: ‘leverage’ (or in other words ‘take advantage of), ‘reach out’ (or in other words ‘get in touch with’) and ‘it’s on my radar’ (or in other words ‘I already know about it’).
So, do you agree? Will you join us and jilt the jargon? Should these words be eradicated from every business meeting for ever more? Or, are there other words that you think should be added to the list?
