Sunday, June 22, 2008

Hooray for our British cousins

Last Friday, the Local Government Association in Great Britain told British civil servants to banish the buzzwords. One hundred words, including stakeholders, synergies, coterminosity, revenue stream, and empowerment, should be excised, the Association says.

Well, hallelujah! May I suggest that American business take a leaf from this book and immediately banish leverage, paradigm shift, planful, impactful, point in time, presenteeism, repurpose, radar screen, off-peopling, low-hanging fruit, messaging, mission critical, granularity, human capital, enterprise, drive and driver, bandwidth, actionable (except in its legal sense), at the end of the day, skill set, seamless, value proposition, value add, and many more. If we can stop wasting our time thinking up meaningless, self-conscious "business" phrases, perhaps we can back to doing actual business.