Those Clichéd and Annoying Corporate Phrases and What They Actually Mean

Thulaganyo Jankey | Monday April 7, 2025 15:12

I think growing up for most of us it was cool to say ‘purchase an automobile’ which was actually simply ‘buy a car’. This has since faded like Sly Stallone’s six pack and is firmly in the rearview mirror. Yes, language keeps evolving but it is becoming more and more annoying and some of us are tired of the trickery. Managers seem to have bags of theses phrases. In fact, according to Newton’s Fourth Law of managers you are not a manager until you can spit out these clichés to your team. When they say something like ‘think outside the box’ all they mean is ‘we are tired of your blandness and lack of inventiveness’.

This is usually a prelude to being shown the exit door. Because let’s face it – no employee ever does that. Ever heard something like ‘today we are going to give John special recognition for thinking outside the box’. Instead you will hear managers accusing bewildered employees of not thinking outside the box. ‘Let’s take this offline’ is usually the genesis of a fight that you don’t want people to see. Do not take the bait. It is the online equivalent of ‘let’s take this outside’ which sometimes peters into altered dental formulae. So you better be prepared for a bare-knuckle encounter if you accede to that. ‘Thanks in advance’ is a phrase filled with more menace than Donald Trump at the sight of an African. It is a low key threat to cajole you into action. What it actually means is ‘you must do this as I expect you to do it and I am not about to waste my thanks on you’. As a young professional I once attended a meeting where one of the managers talked about ‘leverage our core competencies'. I was sitting next to an equally puzzled manager who promised to translate it to me after the meeting but evaded me until Mr Google was born.

That is when I discovered that all he meant was we should use whatever skills or resources we had. As the economy face-planted this was the rallying cry in the civil service but the reality is people seemed to have been expected to do more with nothing. Basically multiplying zeroes! ‘Low-hanging fruit’ is another one and the meaning is more to do with ‘we cannot be bothered with the more difficult goals so we will hover around Easyville for now.’ ‘Do more with less’ is another tired phrase managers who themselves have failed to do more with less use to inspire their juniors. It basically means ‘look I have failed to give you the right level of resources for this job but hey get on with it anyway. Darn it!’ Like many career professionals a friend of mine once insisted that becoming a manager would not change his vocabulary to encompass those annoying corporate phrases.

He was going to be the same professional person, darn it! He was NOT going to turn into one of those managers who babble obsessively using phrases plucked from everywhere else except the normal person’s Oxford Dictionary of English. Above all, he was NEVER going to wear a suit. A few years later all the promises he had made to me all came crashing down in one conference room somewhere in the city. I suppose all those years of consuming clichéd phrases from his manager had finally sent him an invoice that he could not ignore. So I suppose this comes with being a manager and you can only understand it if you are one! (For comments, feedback and insults email inkspills1969@gmail.com) Thulaganyo Jankey is a Rapporteur and training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email ultimaxtraining@gmail.com