10 More Phrases You Need to Know to Get Ahead in Business

In my previous article, “10 Phrases You Need to Know to Get Ahead in Business,” I explained how The corporate world is different from the real world. People think in different terms and deal with different concepts, and provided a run-down of 10 commonly used phrases that are essential if you want to get ahead in business. Here’s the advanced course: 10 more phrases you need to know to get ahead in business.

Sporting Analogies

The use of sports analogies and terminology is as de rigueur in the business world as it is cringe-inducing. This is largely on account of phrases like “stepping up to the plate” being used by middle-aged bozos who clearly have no interest in sport – or indeed anything outside of work – in order to build some kind of connection with their (usually younger) staff who do have outside interests. In the UK, it’s bad enough when these so-not-down-with-the-kids-it-hurts management types make assumptions about the hobbies and interests of their staff and start shoehorning in references to “goals” and “getting over the line” and “getting a hole in one” and “kabaddi kabaddi kabaddi” (ok, I made that one up), but when they use phrases that relate to sports not played – or watched – in the UK, the absurdity of the use of sports-related terms becomes particularly apparent.

Skills: Hard and Soft

Whatever your line of work, you need skills. Without skills, you can’t do the job – whatever it may be. So, it stands to reason that companies need skilled employees, whatever their line of business, be it refuse collecting, shelf-stacking, pizza delivery, brain surgery or aeronautics. But it’s only really in an office environment that you’ll find people extolling the virtues of the staff wit the right “soft skills.” According to a recent BBC report, “many graduates lack soft skills.” But what are these skills, which, apparently, “recognised as key to making businesses more profitable and better places to work” according to a number of sources?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the definition is as broad as to be near meaningless, as is often the case with the “conceptual” aspect of business. Fundamentally, soft skills relate to a person’s interpersonal skills, their possessing a responsible demeanour, their ability to self-manage, negotiate, and their levels of honesty and integrity. Of course, soft skills don’t necessarily reflect one’s ability to actually do the job. Moreover, if an interviewer simply isn’t keen on an applicant, even if they have the best experience and are the best qualified for the job, they can turn them down with the excuse – sorry, justification – that they “didn”t possess the right soft skills.’ And what the hell is a “hard skill” is such a thing exists?

Roll Up, Roll Up, Roll Out

The word “roll” has a number of meanings, according to the dictionary. It can be a cylinder, a small bread loaf, a list or register, or, when used as a verb, indicates turning over and over on an axis. However, in business speak, to “roll out” means to introduce broadly. Of course, sometimes a “roll-out” can be company wide, while others can see a small team of three our four adopt a new process, in which case said process is “rolled out” to the team or department. The term has recently crossed into common parlance, and often appears in news stories. Indeed, a recent advertisement for an airliner stated that certain services – food, reclining seats, or somesuch – were being rolled out across all flights in the coming months. In light of this, the dominance of the term seems to suggest that rolling out may be analogous to the action of a steamroller.

Blameshifting

You’ve fucked up. Royally. So royally you could probably even find yourself out of a job. Do you grovel for your life and your career? No, of course not. You point the finger. So-and-so fed me the wrong stats, or didn’t provide them on schedule. So-and-so completely failed to touch base when he was supposed to, and consequently you had no idea he’d taken the project in completely the wrong tangent. So-and-so gets hauled over the coals, and your job is safe. Yes, let some other poor cunt take the heat. The blame…. has been shifted. And that… is blameshifting.

Passing the Buck

Sometimes there’s no blame as such. But in business, you need the right tools, and the right support from the right people. Which, for those in higher management, means a lot of people who sit around and nod in agreement and make encouraging noises during meetings, agree to do everything suggested, and then delegate the task of actually doing what’s been agreed to some poorly paid sucker further down the food chain. So, when progress is slower than the higher management wants, it’s not the fault of the nodding, encouraging cronies. It’s because the guys they delegated to aren’t pulling their weight, or encountered various obstacles or “blockages.”

Ask the poorly paid sucker about the obstacles, and you’ll find another, even moor poorly paid sucker has encountered problems – IT issues, or all the staff on his department have been off sick or quit and not been replaced. On referring to IT or HR about their involvement, it will transpire there are budget issues. Probably a shortfall because someone in higher management is being a tightwad. And so it goes on, up and down, to and fro, along and along. Passing the buck can be a very effective career strategy, and doing it well without ever being caught without an excuse is a valuable skill. A soft one, no doubt.

Capture That Data

The connotations of “capture” to the majority of people, are, I would expect, suggestive of being caught or taking prisoners rather than suggesting anything to do with information. But given the way so much information gets misused and misinterpreted, it’s perhaps fitting that to gather and record information and numbers is referred to as capturing the data. After all, you just know all that data’s begging to be set free again….

Flow Charts

Planning is everything in business. Indeed, for some people, planning is a full-time job. But “planning stuff” doesn’t sound particularly sexy, and so to pretty things up, charts and illustrations – usually done on Powerpoint – are favoured by these tedious nerds. So, you want to know how something happens? Sure. But “you go from A to C via B really isn”t impressive, which is why jazzing things up with boxes connected by lines and arrows is the thing to do. But then, “boxes connected by lines and arrows” doesn’t sound too impressive either, which is why Flow Charts and Process Maps were invented. It makes the data you’ve captured look cool and sound cool and, better still, co-ordinated, rendering a haphazard pile of papers being shunted between desks a smooth, linear sequence of events. Clever huh?

Acronymamania!

“Quick! I need a SOAP ASAP! And I need that MI PDQ, I’m in a telecon in five!” you’ve probably heard such things being said – or yelled – countless times by managers and management suck-ups if you happen to work in an office. If you know what the fuck they’re on about, then it’s a fair sign that you’ve probably been there for too long. Time is money. Using words takes time, and therefore costs money. Thus, to save money, acronyms can be immensely useful. Acronyms aren’t terrible per se, and nor are they found exclusively in the business domain. But in the corporate environment, managers and people on projects have a habit of cooking up new ones and creating acronyms for things that probably don’t really need or warrant acronyms behind closed doors and in exclusive meetings. “Yes, we need to really start pushing them on the Scheme for Outreach Directives, going forward… that way, we can really start Making a Difference and provide Good Value for Money, going forward.”

Quite forgetting that these new terms aren’t common knowledge, a mass communication will be circulated around the entire company, and it will be littered with these obscure sequences of capital letters without any explanation of their meaning: “All staff, FYI: Project Beckham is pleased to announce that Bill McToss will be the CUNT going forward. PB”s objectives are focused around our focus on SOD, which will enable us to facilitate a mode of operating whereby all staff will be able to MAD. We hope to see al staff MAD by the end of the year, and there will be MAD meetings held across all sites ITNF, because SOD is central to our FUCK and SHIT strategy in the next FY. Our new impetus is on GVFM and we hope to roll this out to all departments in the next 6 months going forward.’

Statistically Speaking…

Everyone knows that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. But in business, statistics – or Stats – mean everything. Even when they mean nothing. They dress them up in pie-charts, graphs, Venn diagrams, wavy lines in different colours to show the targets and the actuality and waffle on at length about the way “the figures speak for themselves” in board meetings and presentations, often without having even the vaguest grasp on what the crunched numbers are saying. And what are they saying? Well, precisely whatever whoever’s presenting them wants to. It’s all a matter of spin. Spin? No, glass half full / glass half empty! For example, when it’s announced that the latest customer survey showed that 75% of respondents were happy with the service, it’s often whooped up as a big positive. Cue huge round of back-slapping and ignore the fact that 25% of respondents to the same survey thought the service was gash. Until it’s time for the annual reviews and the bonuses of the staff who actually do the work, at which point 25% of customers were dissatisfied, which is an unacceptable level, and is used to justify doling out paltry payouts and below-inflation annual increases.

“But is it Feasible?”

Of course, not all questions have answers. And some questions cannot be answered with a simple, straightforward “yes” or “no.” But many can. In the real world, you may ask – or be asked – if 4 printers is enough between 800 people who are employed to write letters for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week. And the answer, based on simple logic and common sense would almost always be “no” (followed by the exclamation “of course not! What a ridiculous question!”) but in the business world, it requires gathering a bunch of people together to discuss it, before setting out the objectives of a feasibility study. Usually, they’ll spend a month coming up with a codename for the project, spend hours flouncing about and arranging “telecons” and generally pricking about while failing to grasp the basic premise of what they’re researching, only to conclude after six months that they need to gather more data to make a proper assessment. So next time you hear talk of feasibility, just say “fuck it, I”ll bring my own pencil sharpener from home.’

Memorise these and use them, as frequently as possible. You’ll be on the board in no time.