NEW YORK–Buzzwords. Credit union leaders are as guilty as executives in any other industry of falling back on what is sometimes called “corporate-speak.” Now one publication has asked its readers to rate the buzzwords they find most over-used—and often meaningless and annoying. Credit unions will recognize each and every one of them.
“Like a speaker's verbal tics, once you become aware of somebody's overuse of buzzwords, it's like the constant drip of a leaky faucet,” observed The Atlantic, which conducted the reader poll.
“Even worse, business buzzwords, unlike technical terms, have fuzzy meanings. (What does "holistic" really mean?) Because spoken words and internal thoughts are in, ahem, a feedback loop, fuzzy meanings lead to fuzzy thinking, according to neuroscience,” The Atlantic reported.
The Atlantic recently asked its readers to rate 32 business buzzwords against one another in what it described as something of an “elimination tournament.”
The winner of that process was "lean in," which was probably around before Sheryl Sandberg co-opted it for her book, the publication reported.
What one analyst said was most interesting was the raw scores that each buzzword achieved when introduced into the contest, because the number of votes that each received is an indicator of how much people dislike that particular buzzword.
The 31 Finalists
In response, the Atlantic reporter created a little spreadsheet and re-ranked the buzzwords according to their perceived heinousness when compared with another buzzword with a similar meaning, intentionally leaving out one buzzword, as explained below.
Here’s the list:
- Holistic approach (958)
- Pivot (947)
- Unpack (806)
- Circle back (794)
- Buy in (702)
- Change agent (675)
- Lean in (646)
- Bandwidth (643)
- Think outside the box (604)
- Align (545)
- Ping (534)
- Double click (499)
- Deep Dive (491)
- Close the loop (472)
- Touch base (459)
- Liaise (404)
- Value proposition (374)
- Hop on a call (363)
- Loop in (352)
- Debrief (341)
- Pain points (338)
- Win-win (337)
- Silo (309)
- Disruption (292)
- Optics (291)
- Huddle (283)
- Robust (264)
- At capacity (259)
- Pushback (226)
- Move the needle (214)
- Stakeholder (200)
One Final Word
The one buzzword not included: "value added. The reason: it garnished just 130 thumbs downs, which was a huge statistical drop from its nearest competitor "stakeholder,” according to The Atlantic.
“Would-be leaders (or anyone else) who use a corporate buzzword more than, say, once a minute when speaking, or once a paragraph while writing, risks sounding like a character from Dilbert or The Office. Hard to earn respect when you sound like a joke,” the Atlantic said.