Wanky work speak

[mx wcfc]

Oh, and "lunch and learn".

We've been having "technical lunches" for years. Lunchtime technical sessions, with a lunch laid on as compensation. I always told my team to get out and stretch their legs/get some fresh air afterwards any way. Now it's "lunch and learn"

To me " lunch and learn" just sounds primary school.

 

[8ball]

Oh, and "lunch and learn".

We've been having "technical lunches" for years. Lunchtime technical sessions, with a lunch laid on as compensation. I always told my team to get out and stretch their legs/get some fresh air afterwards any way. Now it's "lunch and learn"

To me " lunch and learn" just sounds primary school.

There was no bloody learning going on at lunchtime at my primary school.

 

[mx wcfc]

There was no bloody learning going on at lunchtime at my primary school.

This is probably somewhere I shouldn't go, but did you not play "kiss chase"? Christ the arguments at break time about whether we were going to play football, or "kiss chase"..........

 

[Sue]

Oh, and "lunch and learn".

We've been having "technical lunches" for years. Lunchtime technical sessions, with a lunch laid on as compensation. I always told my team to get out and stretch their legs/get some fresh air afterwards any way. Now it's "lunch and learn"

To me " lunch and learn" just sounds primary school.

I take your 'lunch and learn' and raise you 'brown bag session' where you spend your lunchtime in a training type thing but provide your own lunch which you end up not eating as no-one else is and you don't want to look weird.

 

[8ball]

I take your 'lunch and learn' and raise you 'brown bag session' where you spend your lunchtime in a training type thing but provide your own lunch which you end up not eating as no-one else is and you don't want to look weird.

“Brown bag” session to me implies a discreetly but unconvincingly hidden bottle of Buckfast as a lunchtime lubricant.

 

[8ball]

This is probably somewhere I shouldn't go, but did you not play "kiss chase"? Christ the arguments at break time about whether we were going to play football, or "kiss chase"..........

Dunno. I didn’t go to an all boys’ school.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Spitballing sounds quite disgusting, what does it mean in any other non jargon context? Is it an Americanism?

I have no idea - and, yes, I thought it sounded pretty vile too.

Yes, it’s an American description of a rather disgusting primary school practice.

or (again american) a form of ball tampering on the part of the pitching side in baseball.

Oh, and "lunch and learn".

I take your 'lunch and learn' and raise you 'brown bag session' where you spend your lunchtime in a training type thing but provide your own lunch which you end up not eating as no-one else is and you don't want to look weird.

and with the expectation that you do this in the unpaid bit of your lunch break?

 

[8ball]

and with the expectation that you do this in the unpaid bit of your lunch break?

They can expect whatever they want to expect.

 

[Sue]

and with the expectation that you do this in the unpaid bit of your lunch break?

Of course. Taking responsibility for your own personal development. Or something.

 

[A380]

Oh, and "lunch and learn".

We've been having "technical lunches" for years. Lunchtime technical sessions, with a lunch laid on as compensation. I always told my team to get out and stretch their legs/get some fresh air afterwards any way. Now it's "lunch and learn"

To me " lunch and learn" just sounds primary school.

We had lunch and learns in my last place but being HMG’s finest had to take our own fucking lunches…

 

[baldrick]

I'm fascinated by this sort of stuff, as you see different patterns of it in different places. One place had everyone using the word 'absolutely' all the time, in the oddest places. 'I'm absolutely going for lunch' for example. Everyone also said 'link in with' rather than 'talk to', so you got 'can you link in with Rebecca about that?'.

Next place had 'keep me honest here' used liberally. So if you were explaining something in a meeting, you'd start the explanation by asking for a person or persons to 'keep you honest here', meaning that you wanted them to say if you were saying something incorrect. Current place has 'if I'm brutally honest' as a very common preface to saying anything that might even slightly disagree with someone else.

The big one for me though is 'strategic'. I ended up studying the field of strategy at uni last time round, and came to realise that it's a hugely varied field where the word strategy can mean many, many different things, some of them directly contradictory / opposite. So anyone who says 'strategic' clearly doesn't know what the word means, as if they did, they'd know that they didn't, and therefore wouldn't use it. It really is the number one bullshit klaxon of our modern age, from 'social media strategist' as a job title, to 'strategic alignment' as a plea for everyone just to sort their shit out.

I added strategic to my job title

 

[Poot]

We have lunch and learns and it's all online, so what you're doing there is providing training during a lunchbreak. See also 'if you take a quick coffee break, why not look at the Company's new material about x, y and z?'

We need to provide training so that management understand what a break is and where they can shove the Company's new material. Going forward.

 

[friendofdorothy]

...
The big one for me though is 'strategic'. I ended up studying the field of strategy at uni last time round, and came to realise that it's a hugely varied field where the word strategy can mean many, many different things, some of them directly contradictory / opposite. So anyone who says 'strategic' clearly doesn't know what the word means, as if they did, they'd know that they didn't, and therefore wouldn't use it. It really is the number one bullshit klaxon of our modern age, from 'social media strategist' as a job title, to 'strategic alignment' as a plea for everyone just to sort their shit out.

Did not know this. I thought Strategy was about having a plan - seeing ahead and anticipating difficulties and that sort of thing - like in a game of chess. Am I being too simple?

 

[Gerry1time]

Did not know this. I thought Strategy was about having a plan - seeing ahead and anticipating difficulties and that sort of thing - like in a game of chess. Am I being too simple?

Planning is usually something different. Tends to be lower level, committed (although you can commit to either deliverables or outcomes) and (ideally) shorter term, with the inputs to it being more specific / localised to the things being achieved too. Strategy tends to be longer term, usually more outcome based, with much broader inputs. In a very loose sense, you could plan to deliver thing x, but your strategy would more likely be to achieve broad outcome Y. You might even create a plan (or series of interlinking plans) to achieve your strategy / strategic goals.

Strategy can vary in lots of ways though. As one example, you have someone like Porter and his five forces, which makes the practice of strategy creation more process based and methodical, whilst on the other end Mintzberg sees strategy as more of an emergent phenomenon with more sensing and responding (see also Dave Snowden's Cynefin framework, which is very much flavour of the day for some Linkedin folks).

Basically, it's a huge field, and no part of the field is right or wrong as such, but because it's such a huge field, using a single word to represent it often leads to misalingment around what is meant by the word strategy in a specific context.

 

[bmd]

Also the trend for renaming senior hr managers as people officers

Fuck off mate, you've made that up!

 

[Pickman's model]

Fuck off mate, you've made that up!

By no means

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[bmd]

I suspect that the negative reaction to the use of such metaphor is less to do with the evolving and imaginative use of language, though. I suspect it is actually a perfectly understandable intuitive dislike of corporations themselves and their power relations. Anything associated with corporate activity thus becomes suspicious and hated. I can certainly get behind that kind of hate.

Plus they're used by people who believe they are polishing their colleagues' perception of them.

One of the worst I’ve come across is “Spitballing” - the same as “brainstorming”. I was corrected by a “course facilitator” for using the latter as it’s somehow offensive - although I’m not sure to whom, how or why.

“Pump Priming” - something to do with preparing to disseminate you idea to others. A bar tending/cellar working term used by people who likely have never worked in a pub.

“Owning my truth” - wtf?

Owning my truth aka making shit up.

Also, Gerry1time , I'm nicking bullshit klaxon.

 

[SpookyFrank]

There was no bloody learning going on at lunchtime at my primary school.

Fun fact: there are now secondary schools where every minute of the day, including lunch breaks, is 'structured time' ie the kids are told where to sit and with whom even at lunch, and they have to do work while they eat.

Presumably there's a deputy head stood outside the bogs all day with a stopwatch and a clipboard.

 

[Pickman's model]

Fun fact: there are now secondary schools where every minute of the day, including lunch breaks, is 'structured time' ie the kids are told where to sit and with whom even at lunch, and they have to do work while they eat.

Presumably there's a deputy head stood outside the bogs all day with a stopwatch and a clipboard.

Time and motions

 

[bmd]

I take your 'lunch and learn' and raise you 'brown bag session' where you spend your lunchtime in a training type thing but provide your own lunch which you end up not eating as no-one else is and you don't want to look weird.

I've had many a brown bag session. Followed by a quick go on the pipe and a long old nod.

 

[seeformiles]

I've had many a brown bag session. Followed by a quick go on the pipe and a long old nod.

Are you working in an opium den?

 

[bmd]

Are you working in an opium den?

I've often wondered what it was like, doing the night shift in a one. Lots of puke, I expect.

 

[weltweit]

At poly I learnt about commercial and industrial decision making units, when people who are also consumers cooperate to make a corporate buying decision, for which they might have a decision making process. So a DMU might have a DMP for a commercial decision. Later I found that individuals still acted as individuals even inside a DMU, and for them to swing towards your product or service at least one person in the DMU had to be in line for significant positive kudos if the project went ahead. So while there are DMU and they may have a DMP in the last analysis they act as individual consumers. Further than that, they probably don't really have a suitable DMP especially if they haven't bought anything like your service before but expect they will somehow muddle though, hopefully for you with your rather than a competitor's guidance as to what the DMP should be in this case.

 

[keybored]

onboarding

 

[weltweit]

onboarding

Onshoring

 

[8ball]

Fun fact: there are now secondary schools where every minute of the day, including lunch breaks, is 'structured time' ie the kids are told where to sit and with whom even at lunch, and they have to do work while they eat.

Presumably there's a deputy head stood outside the bogs all day with a stopwatch and a clipboard.

That doesn’t sound healthy on several levels.

 

[SpookyFrank]

That doesn’t sound healthy on several levels.

But they get a 0.7% bump in the exam results of the kids who survive.

 

[friendofdorothy]

Planning is usually something different. Tends to be lower level, committed (although you can commit to either deliverables or outcomes) and (ideally) shorter term, with the inputs to it being more specific / localised to the things being achieved too. Strategy tends to be longer term, usually more outcome based, with much broader inputs. In a very loose sense, you could plan to deliver thing x, but your strategy would more likely be to achieve broad outcome Y. You might even create a plan (or series of interlinking plans) to achieve your strategy / strategic goals.

Strategy can vary in lots of ways though. As one example, you have someone like Porter and his five forces, which makes the practice of strategy creation more process based and methodical, whilst on the other end Mintzberg sees strategy as more of an emergent phenomenon with more sensing and responding (see also Dave Snowden's Cynefin framework, which is very much flavour of the day for some Linkedin folks).

Basically, it's a huge field, and no part of the field is right or wrong as such, but because it's such a huge field, using a single word to represent it often leads to misalingment around what is meant by the word strategy in a specific context.

So much wanky work talk in that. Sort of bs you spout to justify your salary. How are you at chess?

 

[Puddy_Tat]

onboarding

 

[8ball]

So much wanky work talk in that. Sort of bs you spout to justify your salary. How are you at chess?

Ooh, meeow!