workplace

50 Workplace Phrases We Love to Hate

If you dislike workplace jargon but find yourself using it anyways, you’re not alone.

A recent survey by American Express found that 88% of respondents said they use jargon without understanding it, and 64% reported using words and terms like this “multiple times” weekly.

Curious, I polled my LinkedIN network about the words or phrases they wish they could eliminate from the workplace. Based on their responses, here is the 2017 Workplace Jargon blacklist:

  1. Line of sight
  2. Core competencies
  3. Drinking the kool-aid
  4. Move the needle
  5. Good to great
  6. Follow through
  7. Happy path
  8. Don’t recreate the wheel
  9. Streamline the process
  10. Touch base offline
  11. Paradigm shift
  12. Drilling down
  13. Hit the ground running
  14. Boil the ocean
  15. Mitigate the risk
  16. At the end of the day
  17. Let me reach out to you
  18. Let’s circle back on that
  19. Ducks in a row
  20. Blue sky thinking
  21. Deeper dive
  22. Scale/scalable
  23. Bleeding edge
  24. Let’s parking lot that
  25. Teachable moment
  26. Eye on the prize
  27. Sanity check
  28. Plan your work, work your plan
  29. Checkup from the neck up
  30. As of yesterday
  31. Create shared understanding
  32. Create middle ground
  33. Revenue reciprocation
  34. Safeguard business interests
  35. Temperature check
  36. Let’s recalibrate
  37. Lean operation
  38. Moving forward
  39. Business as usual
  40. It is what it is
  41. Slow down to speed up
  42. Bubble up
  43. Close the loop
  44. Pain point
  45. Touch base
  46. Happy medium
  47. Ping me
  48. Fluid situation
  49. Swim lanes
  50. Tiger teams