Business Jargon 商业行话

Are they thinking outside the box?

Most people like using short-cuts. We all usually want to get from A to B as quickly as possible and when we want to get our message across to people with the same job as us, we often use jargon. It's a kind of short-cut that helps us communicate without wasting time. Jargon is simply a kind of language shorthand that lets us say what we mean quickly. Or is it?

In the business world you might expect to hear or use a lot of jargon. However, a report just out in Britain claims that most managers overuse business jargon and that this has a negative effect on how staff feel.

Investors in People - a public body whose main stakeholder is the Department for Education and Skills – says that using terms like "blue-sky thinking" rather than saying more plainly "imagine new or different ways of doing things" baffles employees and widens the gap between managers and staff.

Most employees in Britain, according to this survey, have a low opinion of colleagues who use management jargon. Over a third of those surveyed think it shows a lack of confidence and almost one in five think people who use it are untrustworthy or trying to cover something up.

Some of the most overused business expressions that fell foul of those surveyed (and their more straightforward explanations) were:

Get our ducks in a row (have everything arranged efficiently), brain dump (tell everything you know about a particular subject) and think outside the box (be creative in how you think about problems).

Peter Russian from Investors in People said that an effective boss is one who can communicate in a way which everyone can easily understand not one who uses a lot of management jargon.

So now that you've got the helicopter view (just an overview) of business jargon, it's time to give you a heads up (a warning) not to overuse this management speak. But that's a real no-brainer (that's simple), isn't it?

GLOSSARY 词汇表

short-cuts捷径

wasting time浪费时间

overuse过分使用

a public body公共机构

plainly简单地；明白地

widens the gap between加大鸿沟

a low opinion of不赞赏

untrustworthy 不值得信任的

fell foul最不赞同；有争议

creative有创造力的

jargon 行话；专业语

shorthand速记

investors投资人

stakeholder股东

baffles使困惑

survey统计调查

a lack of confidence缺乏信心

cover something up掩盖什么东西

straightforward直截了当

effective有效力的