I started using corporate lingo ironically – and now I can't stop

CNA

21-06-2025

I nodded as a coworker listed out a few suggestions on ways her team and mine could collaborate in the next few months.
'Yeah, that sounds like a good way to synergise,' I said.
And then we both made a face.
Almost a decade ago, when I started my first official 'office job', I made a silent vow to myself that I would never become One of Those. A corporate drone on autopilot, mindlessly regurgitating buzzwords and key phrases day in and day out to no real end until I would one day reach my final form: a glorified LinkedIn bot.
I didn't really 'use' corporate lingo so much as make fun of it – in a good-natured, tongue-in-cheek sort of way. It was a quick fix for lightening the mood for everybody, myself included: 'Well, since that project fell through, guess that's one less loop to close, huh?'
But these days, I find myself starting to slip into corporate lingo unironically, the same way I started doing years ago with skinny jeans, emojis, and the acronym 'LOL'.
LINGO LIMBO
More people are expressing annoyance or frustration with it these days, especially on social media, but make no mistake – corporate lingo is nothing new. From the 'value chains' of the 1980s and 1990s to the 'key performance indicators' you hear your own manager wax on about today, such jargon has long been a mainstay of working life.
Like with most things that eventually trigger widespread discussions and accusations online of being 'annoying' or 'cringe', there's a legitimately useful element to corporate lingo's villain origin story.
Business and work have grown more complex over the last few decades. Thanks to globalisation, the systems we operate in have become more interconnected and as a result, more expansive and intricate. So have the individual roles we play in those systems.
We started needing quicker, simpler ways to sum up big or complicated ideas – or ideas that weren't that big or complicated, but were just a mouthful to say.
After all, it's definitely easier to say 'outsourcing' than 'farming this out to a peripheral individual, group or organisation so I have more time and energy to focus on more important things'.
But over time, something happened to corporate lingo: People started creating buzzwords and phrases for things and situations that didn't seem to require it at all.
We stopped postponing or revisiting discussions of an issue and started 'circling back' instead.
We eschewed talking to each other and started 'touching base' instead.
And then people started 'checking in', but not just any checks, mind you. Temperature checks. Sense checks. Vibe checks.
Instead of coining new terms to neatly condense big, complicated ideas, we now seem to be finding overly complex ways to phrase very simple things.
WHEN YOU SAY NOTHING AT ALL
Again, it's not a bad thing to develop lingo over the course of engaging with other fellow humans in labour.
Well before we became office dwellers, plenty of colloquialisms from agricultural work had been leaving the farm to become part of everyday English. For example, "No reason to have a cow about that" or "beat a dead horse".
Such jargon of yore does the work it's meant to do, which is to replace a wordy sentiment or thought process with a bite-sized turn of phrase.
In comparison, what exactly does the phrase 'moving the needle' accomplish, particularly when in most cases, you immediately have to go on to explain exactly what needle you're hoping to move and in which direction? (Yes, we've done it, we've made shop-talk more efficient – all we had to do was transform our seven-word statement into a 15-word run-on behemoth.)
The danger is when we're more concerned about communication for communication's sake, rather than the purposes and objectives for which we're communicating. Are we trying to be in the know, or simply appear so to others? Are we really achieving or improving productivity, or just performing it?
MAKE WORK JARGON WORK AGAIN
Either way, corporate lingo is here to stay. The exact words and phrases in rotation may come and go, but humans will always want to find a way to jazz up interpersonal communication simply because we're creative, social beings.
So is there a way to salvage this? (Or, for the corporate jargon-heads out there: What are the actionable insights and key takeaways to be derived from this?)
For my part, I still find myself resisting what I feel are inorganic attempts to shoehorn unnecessary lingo into conversations about work, but I'm trying not to be pedantic about it.
If someone says 'Can we align or bridge the gap on this?', I respond, 'Sure, what's unclear right now?'
If someone says 'Can I get a sense check on when this might be completed?', I give them a date. (But maybe I'll also have a little rant to a fellow coworker later on about why the question can't simply be 'When will this be done?')
Instead of the snark I used to deploy perhaps a little too freely in response to cringey corporate jargon, I try to reach for the same attitude I employ whenever I'm speaking with someone who may not be entirely fluent in English – if I understand what they're saying, maybe how they're saying it doesn't have to matter as much.
Still, at the end of the day, there's never any harm in asking, plain and simple: 'What do you mean?'