Yesterday I posted about a new BBC podcast looking at the history behind this buzzword: Disruptor.
I since came across a list of 119 of the worst business buzzwords in 2020 (thanks to TrustRadius). Check them out below.
The 119 Worst Business Buzzwords for 2020
- Synergy
- Think outside the box (and other variations, like “step out of the box,” an “out of the box” idea, etc.)
- Take it offline
- Circle back
- Low-hanging fruit
- At the end of the day
- Cloud, and cloud-based
- To not know what you don’t know
- Big Data
- Move the needle
- Leverage
- Agile
- Best Practice
- Digital transformation
- Deep dive
- Bandwidth
- Customer journey
- Moving forward–and its close cousin “going forward”
- Next level, up-level, level up
- Reach out
- Touch base
- Wheelhouse
- Disruptor
- Alignment / Aligned
- Right
- Bottom line
- Acronyms (FYI, ROI, KPI, etc.)
- Disruptive
- Value (as in value-add, driving value, value proposition, corporate values, or value drop)
- Ping
- Lean, and lean-in
- Paradigm (as in paradigm shift or breaking the paradigm)
- Partner–the verb (“Partner with us”) and the noun (“Business partner”)
- Ideate / Ideation
- Ask, used as a noun to mean “request”
- Learnings
- Holistic, especially in the phrase “Holistic approach”
- Culture (as in “company culture,” “corporate culture,” “startup culture,” or “creating a [inset adj. here] culture”)
- Thought leader / Thought leadership
- Content (whether “Content is king” or “snackable content”)
- Growth hacking (which is essentially just marketing)
- Buy-in
- Pain point
- Swimlane, or even just “lane,” particularly when someone is telling you to stay in yours.
- Best in class / Best of breed
- Game-changer
- Teamwork, team-building, and team-players
- Next-gen
- Hard stop
- ROI (“Return on investment”)
- IoT (“Internet of things”)
- Innovative
- Influencer
- Single pane of glass
- Customer-centric
- All hands on deck
- Net-net
- Put a pin in it
- Stakeholders
- Strategic
- Metrics
- Machine Learning
- Pivot
- On the same page
- Advertainment
- Collaboration
- Intelligence, whether it’s “artificial intelligence,” “business intelligence,” “emotional intelligence,” “market intelligence,” “competitive intelligence,” or otherwise.
- Automation
- Blockchain
- Intuitive
- Analytics
- Platform
- Open the kimono
- Unpack
- Giving 110%
- Tables of all sorts: table stakes, bringing something to the table, or tabling it for later
- Quick win
- Onboarding (and “get everyone on board”)
- Scrum
- Boil the ocean
- Story (in context of “storytelling,” “user stories,” or making a “long story short”)
- On your plate, or having a “full plate”
- 30,000 ft. view, 10,000 ft. view, and other escalations of a top-down view
- Core competency / Core capabilities
- Rockstar
- Loops: “looping back,” keeping someone “in the loop,” or the dreaded “feedback loop”
- Free, and even worse, freemium
- Blue sky
- Integration
- Engagement
- Actionable
- Efficiency
- Socialize
- Diversity
- Verticals
- Bio-break
- Bleeding edge
- Optimize
- Scalable
- Organic
- Omni-channel
- Empower
- Win-win
- Optics
- DevOps
- Data-driven
- In the weeds
- Double click (as in to “double-click” into something)
- On your radar
- Ducks in a row
- Drill down
- Space (as in “playing in” a particular “space”)
- Fast in various forms, such as “fast-paced,” “fail fast” or “cheap, fast, and good”
- Top of mind, mindfulness, and mindshare
- KPI (“Key performance indicator”)
- ASAP (“As soon as possible”)
- Giving back your time
- Per (“per se,” “per my last email,” etc.)
- FYI (“For your information”)
Andrew Essa 