The Workplace (Lexi)Con

The modern economy has given birth to inventions that have changed the course of your workplace productivity. E.g. Telecons, Email, the Alt-Tab key, etc. A key indicator of improvement in workplace productivity is how many more emails, messages and calls can now be had to achieve the same impact as before. 

Of course, this increase in productivity would not have been possible if we had not also focused on the creation of a suitable vocabulary to support it. E.g. I am “Working from Home” sounds much better than

“There’s a live Indo-Pak T20 final today”. 

So, here’s a handy guide for the modern corporate warrior to familiarise himself with the modern arena aka the Office 

ASAP 

Pronounced Ae-Sap, often used to denote urgency on part of the sender and passing the burden of responsibility on the receiver

What it really means

I do not have the will, ability or the understanding of the topic but want to sound important

“Dan, I need those calculations on junction-based fission asap so that I can ignore them for a week”

Must-win 

Something that is meant to appear highly exclusive and inspirational for the sales teams but in reality, is repeatedly overused till it has the same bite as that of molars on a 90-year-old. 

e.g. “Vikas, the Guptaji Mishtan Bhandar is a must-win account for Q1, especially after the loss of the Rolex account”

Business case 

An Excel sheet consisting of imaginary numbers and assumptions so lame that most should be in a wheelchair, but which has confessed to whatever you wanted it to confess to. In spite of which, abundant evidence exists towards its innocence.

e.g. “So as per our projections, the business case is set to deliver an ROI of 35 % and a break-even in 3 months if Guptaji Mishtan Bhandar starts a line of Nuclear fission reactors”

Low-hanging fruit 

Usually meant to represent things that can be won easily and quickly but always by others. 

“Francois, as the project head, I think you should not try and boil the ocean, and you should go for the low hanging fruit of trying to invent an alternative to water”

Circle back 

Used to put to bed a difficult or a ridiculous discussion in a polite way with a promise to revisit it later, i.e. in 2074.

“Steven, your idea of having a solar-powered sun tan bed is interesting, let’s circle back to it in the next QBR”

 Take this offline 

Spoken in Zoom/Teams/Webex calls exclusively, similar to “circle back” but without having any intention of discussing it further.

E.g. – Malcolm, I would love to talk about the mating signals of tapeworms but let’s take it offline and go to the next point on the agenda”

Bandwidth (as in “I don’t have the bandwidth”) 

Effectively a synonym for “interest”, “understanding” or “competence” but ostensibly portrayed as a metaphor for time because it sounds a lot more polished.

e.g. “I would love to head this project but simply don’t have the bandwidth for it.” 

Quick win (like low hanging fruit)

Something that can be closed with minimal effort according to the boss and usually only according to the boss

“Suresh, I just can’t understand why you don’t go for the quick wins of a 20$ rate change to the hourly rate cards of your managed accounts so as to close the gap with your plan?”

Synergy 

A mysterious quantum form of energy that appears out of nowhere during partnership / takeover discussions but mysteriously disappears shortly after the ink dries

e.g. “The merger between Alpha systems and Q systems will create tremendous synergy and an embarrassing joint name”

ROI

Meant to asses real investments but in reality overused/abused to question everything while seemingly appearing astute. 

“We need to make an announcement of the fire in the storeroom? Can you let me know what would be the ROI of that?”

Value

A mysterious property which you can’t see, can’t feel or can’t touch but somehow can always be denoted in $ and be invoiced.

“Graham, we should not sell on price, we should sell on value. Our services deliver more value to enterprises which helps them leverage their core competence to have a strategic market advantage”

 (Try not to giggle while saying this or it might lose its meaninglessness)

Game changer 

Meant to project radical innovation and genius business initiatives, on par with Newton’s work on gravity, or Dimitri Mendeleev’s on the periodic table, however in reality speakers must gush with tired energy and use it to address menial and meaningless changes

“With the introduction of the new game changing double-spacing format in our annual reports, we expect an upward reassessment of our credit rating” 

AI/ Quantum / Digital / Transformative / Disruptive etc

Adjectives which seemingly are given birth with minimal labour pains in the marketing/ PR teams so as to put old wine in new bottle, forgetting that the new wine in an old bottle has more worth in the wine market. 

“We have just announced a major change in our platform strategy and have launched a Disruptive AI-enabled quantum Platform which will not only automate your processes to deliver value but will also make us sound knowledgeable in clichés till the next wave of adjectives”

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