Corporate Buzzwords - A cynic's view

Corporate Buzzwords
[and what they REALLY mean]

DISCLAIMER==========================================================================
=>This is only my percpective of the corporate lexicon, use it at your own risk.
====================================================================================

business portfolio
marketing equivalent to a wallet full of "pictures of my family"; in other
words, stuff you like to brag about that really wasn't your doing.

co-opt
polite term meaning to fight with a business partner

component
a part of the whole; especially, the part that doesn't work well with the rest
core business the apple industry

done deal
subject to change

emerging technologies
things understood only by the tech guys

emergency
anything requested by a user

empower
to tell employees that they matter

flexible
willing to do what the management or marketing people want at the given moment and
able to anticipate what they will want at the next moment

gap analysis
Fancy term for the (the difference btwn the target and actual performance).

go the extra mile
Over-stretch your limbs and have only a pat on your back.

high-level
vague, as in "Let me give you a high-level description of the requirements (i dont know the real shizzle)."

high-profile
important to a good friend of someone in upper-level management

information-based
filled with useless data--well, okay some of it is useful, but the rest is just
there to provide more columns or pages to reports that are generated, printed,
glanced at (optional), and thrown away. [remember this is the cynics view !!]

knowledge base
the sum total of one's prejudices and ignorance

lessons learned
excuses for embarrassing mistakes

leverage
abuse, as in "We need to leverage our team members. A fancy term used to make abused employees feel good !!

market-based
founded upon the ideas of salesmen

mission-critical
Ever hear of 'mission uncritical'?

movers and shakers
the guys who matter

out of the loop
physically present but mentally absent.

proactive
an excuse to be offensive without satisfactory justification

productivity
another name for the 80-hour work week and unpaid overtime.

realignment
mass firing of employees with a clever term to make them (sacked employees) smile.

rightsizing
perpetual reorganization. Think of a headless chicken and you will get what i mean.

standards . . . procedures . . . documentation
a set of business entities outside the scope of knowledge of we computer programmers and systems analysts.

strategic
a characteristic of any plan whose due date is too far away to make it possible to
determine whether the end result will bear any resemblance to the original desired
result

synergy
contraction for "synthetic energy".

tactical
relating to speech which is uttered only after choosing words carefully so as to
avoid hurt feelings

take it off-line
"shut up"

think outside the box
come up with something logical for a change

value-added
more expensive

win-win
relating to a situation that is very beneficial to the person using the term,
regardless of the benefit to others.