Top Buzzwords and Why to Avoid Them, Part I

I'm not against jargon. If you're writing for a company magazine or speaking to a group of like-minded folks who know your industry, jargon is a useful tool. So this post isn't about that. This post, and several to follow, will deal with specific buzzwords--business words that are overused and rarely examined for meaning.

Those who have followed these posts know that my least favorite buzzword is solution, especially when, God help us, it's used as a verb, e.g., "We'll solution marketing's ideas this afternoon." What's the point of a solution if a problem hasn't been articulated? And if you look closely at Web sites, you'll see that solution is often simply a substitute for program, product, or service--all perfectly lovely words that tell the customer something about what the company does.

Right up there with solution is the word leverage. It's almost as overused and just as nonsensical. Leverage, in the context we hear it today, comes to us from the world of finance. Investorwords.com defines it as "the degree to which one is using borrowed money." It became a very popular term during the Go-Go '80s. Everyone was buying companies with OPM (other people's money), using the assets of one company to purchase another, and dancing in the streets. Greed was good. Well, look where that got us. But I digress.

Today, business literature and Web sites leverage everything, e.g., "We leverage our core competencies, business synergies, and human capital to bring you best-of-breed service." I'll bet if you asked the perpetrator of that sentence what he or she meant by leverage, you'd be greeted by a great big silence.

As far as I can tease out from the Web sites where this word appears on page after page, companies are trying to tell you that they have a lot of different kinds of skills and they'll take full advantage of them to give you great service. Leverage has nothing to do it. It's just a buzzword that's run amok.

As I said in Talking Your Way to the Top: Business English That Works, buzzwords are not just meaningless; they can be dangerous. I believe most people use them because they think it makes them sound like the big guys. They become too lazy to dig out a thesaurus and look for an apt synonym for the phrase du jour.

But in the worst case, buzzwords can be employed to shade the truth, to make the picture look rosier than it is. By saying nothing and using a lot of words to do it, companies can sometimes hide the facts. Today, that's shortsighted. Customers are looking for the greatest possible clarity before they plunk down their hard-earned dough. They're fed up with lack of meaning. Show them you care by giving them what they want: direct, simple communication. It will pay off.

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.

I'd like to ...

A few posts ago, I mentioned how the phrase "is designed to" clogs up the flow of writing. Here's another that does the same thing: "like to, " as in, "We'd like to introduce our new product."

This phrase makes it seems as if introducing the product is but a faint hope, a wish, a desire. It's almost as if there's a corollary: "We'd like to introduce our new product (but we can't)."

If you'd like to do something, do it. Say it. Own it.

• "Here's some information about the newest generation of widgets."
• "Introducing our new widgets."
• "The latest in widgets is here today. For you."

Isn't that stronger than, "We'd like to tell you about our new widgets"? (If only we could ... sigh.)

Business writing is full of these weak-kneed construction; they're as invasive as kudzu. To keep your verbal garden healthy, stamp out "like to" today.

Drop these. Their time has passed.

Have you noticed some expressions that are creeping toward serious overuse? Once they seep into the water we hear them constantly, and they begin to lose their power and punch. Look out for:

• "A perfect storm." What this appears to mean is that all conditions are lined up to create an inevitable result. You'll hear the expression now related to politics (Clinton-Obama), economics (the housing downturn), the stock market, the energy market. The list grows every day. Keep an ear cocked for this one, and think twice before using it. People are getting tired of it.
• "It is what it is. " Well, of course it is. How could it be anything else? But when you use this one in business, you don't sound professional. You sound like an aging hippie or a mystic--and you aren't communicating anything of value.

It's not always hot

It's time to gang up on an overused word: hot. Cars are hot. Women, too. Men as well. Clothes. Shoes. On and on. The first billion times advertisers used the word, it might be been fun, amusing, sexy, trendy--or perhaps even hot. But now hot has become tepid, lukewarm, and irritating. If you're over 21, it's a word you might want to think about retiring--or at least mothballing until it comes around again in another 25 years.

Cool lasts forever. Hot doesn't.