I recently applied for a job and to my great surprise I was invited for interview.
I say this, not because I have the slightest doubt that I will be the best person for the job, but because I have been horizon scanning my potentialities as a symposium of one for a number of years (… err, that means self-employed, folks).
Notice anything wrong with the above paragraphs?
Yup. Two things. Despite what all young people with a grade A**** in English seem to believe, ‘could of’ is not — and never will be — grammatically correct English.
And there’s just a hint of jargon, or what is referred to as ‘management speak’. Which is English… Jim… but not as we know it.
Now, while a friend in senior management assures me that there’s a shift away from this coterminous, stakeholder engagement gobbledegook, I overheard part of his conference call on the beach the other day and I didn’t understand a single word of it.
And so, just in case my (hopefully) new employer still buys into the potentialities of jargon, I thought I’d better do some horizon scanning to bring myself up to speed. If, for no better reason, than to endorse my own ‘can do’ culture.
So here are a few things you may find helpful if you want to show your potential new line manager that you’re 500% on board. (It may be worth remembering that Gordon Brown’s problems really began when he admitted that he was only 101% behind Call Me Tony).
And there is no such thing as brainstorming either. No sirree; that smacks of epilepsy and suggests meltdown, so instead it’s referred to as ‘idea showers’.
And while no one in
the workplace wants to appear negative, it’s important to point out that ‘you can’t turn a tanker round with a speedboat change’. Yes… that’s a tanker. It’s a bit similar to Scotty yelling: ‘I canne change the laws of physics!’
‘I’ve got you on my radar’ means ‘you’re of absolutely no interest to me whatsoever’. And ‘low hanging fruit’ is shorthand for ‘a quick win’. Although, oddly enough, ‘a quick win’ appears, to me at least, to be shorter.
Of course we have the old faithfuls like ‘blue-sky thinking, which will mean very little to those living in the UK, and ‘helicopter view’ which will mean very little to anyone other than Sarah Ferguson.
Then there’s ‘close of play.’ It’s not play; it’s work. Grow up.
But my favourite — beating meaningless phrases such as ‘bandwidth, ‘cascading’ and ‘granularity’ — is the phrase voted in a recent BBC poll as the nation’s most hated: ‘going forward’.
I think that’s enough forward-planning; I now feel adequately pre-prepared for my interview.
Go forward and multiply.
Bound to wonder why it was suggested I should read this (rather amusing) piece….(-:
Glad you enjoyed. Please feel free to share… should you feel it appropriate