Many presentations are presented by people who suffer from a disease I call “business speak” which grates on me like fingernails on a chalk board.

“Business speak” words, phases and jargon, tossed around by a writer or a lecturer/speaker/presenter, as shorthand, make the article/presentation tedious to read or to listen.  Often the trite terms are used out of context when a more precise word should be used.  Most importantly, the use of business speak removes all originality or creativity from the article or presentation.  It’s like saying “You know… you know… you know…”

Business speak phrases to be banned:

• “thinking out of the box”- this ridiculously overused phrase has become so ubiquitous that its mere use, ironically, now demonstrates that the writer or speaker is not thinking outside the box, but instead, is locked up inside the box, going down the same old rout path.
• “siloing”- too often used as a shorthand from describing the problem with individuals or agencies working independently when, for whatever reason, they should be working together, for an integrated solution to some problem.  However, the term is most often used to describe a relationship between two or more entities, without diving more deeply into the issues of why there is independence among entities.
• “Just north of…” – (to describe a value, number, or figure, e.g. the national debt is just north of one trillion dollars).  Use it once in a presentation and I am fine with it.  Use it “north of one time” and now you have annoyed me with your lack of creativity.
• “mission critical”- again, use it once.  Cool.  More than once, not so good.
• “workspace” (”space”) -  just overly used.  Often in discussions which are overly general, superficial and vague.  If you want to grab someone’s attention, at some point you need to be specific.  So focus, focus, focus.  Otherwise your article or presentation become business fluff.
• “color blind society” – (to describe a world in which discrimination does not exist)  As someone who suffers from the affliction of colorblindness, I find it offensive to use the term, in such a heartless manner.  All kidding aside, the ironic thing is that it is used in a scientifically, incorrect manner.  Even if, arguendo, we were all color blind, we still could distinguish black from white.  In other words, we still could distinguish a black person from a white person.  So, in fact, the phrase “color blind society” is not only offensive but completely inaccurate to describe a world in which one would not make determinations based on color of ones skin, with the proviso that people are not red-brown or blue-green.