How funny is business lingo? Sometimes, I spew phrases such as, “I’ll loop you in” or “Let’s touch base.” Almost like an out-of-body experience (was that me?). With a shudder and a sense of embarrassment, I admit it. I guess 30 years of working in Corporate America can rub off on a girl.
Business talk is different from everyday talk. Imagine saying to a friend, “Let’s hop on a call,” instead of saying, “I’ll call you.”
So many phrases and so little time. When it comes to business jargon, no other word has more alternatives than the word “meeting.” Let’s schedule a meeting; we should set up a call; let’s touch base; arrange for a catch-up; I’ll put a 1:1 on your calendar; I’ll call you on Teams; time for a quick huddle; we need time to brainstorm; organize a conference; and my favorite is… it’s time for a thought shower.
Whatever buzz phrases you prefer, sometimes it is unnecessary to hop on a call, especially when the situation is low-hanging fruit and it doesn’t even call for heavy lifting.
In my first job in Human Resources, my manager headed to meeting after meeting carrying her nifty leather meeting portfolio. I was 23 years old and remembered thinking about how cool, professional, and important she was. I could not wait to get into a role where I’d be invited to meetings! Almost 30 years later, I would give anything to avoid meetings.
Some meetings are necessary, but my Outlook (no pun intended) on many meetings has always been relatively simple. Or some may say naïve. Instead of meeting after meeting to talk about the work, how about letting go of some of that meeting culture and letting us actually “do” the work? I mean, something has got to give. Who has the bandwidth for that?
A recent Bloomberg study showed that employees spend about 18 hours a week on average in meetings. Noncritical meetings waste around $25,000 per employee manually. Essentially half a work week discussing how the project is a beast instead of tackling it head-on. The ability to hunker down and do the work would be pie in the sky. Let me get to work. I’ll touch base later if we need to get back to the drawing board.
Think about some of the meetings you attend in a given week. How often are you in a meeting, and a topic is added to the “parking lot?” We’ll circle back on that one.
Do we need to sit in a room or on a call to dive deeper? And since when does all hands-on deck mean sitting in a room and chatting? Go back to your desk and move the needle! Boots on the ground, my friends! Disseminate the task before there’s a fire drill, and I’m all on board to give it a 110%!
Working in an organization during Covid-19 added a new level to meeting jargon. The new normal introduced the computer application Zoom into our lives for online meetings. And Zoom, Zooming, and Zoomed were born into the dictionary of business talk. Hey, it’s important to pivot, after all. There are a lot of moving parts.
We may sneak lingo into meetings to “pretty up” what we want to say. Let’s translate.
- “It’s on my radar,” crap, I have not had the time to do it yet, and you caught me.
- “That’s not in my wheelhouse;” “Not my monkeys, not my circus; or That one is above my paygrade.” Nope. Not part of my job, and I want no part of it.
- “I have a hard stop at 3 p.m.” I cannot dedicate one more second to this matter. Moving on to something more important.
- “Let’s table this conversation.” We’re done discussing this issue. And PS, we may never speak of it again.
- “Request for a sidebar.” We need to chat about this privately. It might not be a pretty conversation.
Big business is not going away. Therefore, business speak is here to stay. However, some phrases have crossed the line into everyday talk. That could be a sign of overuse. “Think outside the box,” for example, is so passe that it’s not outside of the box to use this phrase anymore.
