"Put a pin in it"

The copycat contagion of business jargon.

NO CONSIDERATION of the English language in 2023 would be complete without a nod to the contribution made by the business world. Corporate jargon—euphemistic, evasive, idiomatic, jockish, cliché-ridden—proudly builds on a long tradition dating back to the first guy who ever said “interface with” when he meant “talk to.”

Business jargon is like the flu: walk into an office where other people have it on Monday and you come down with it on Wednesday. It’s as if you’ve been brainwashed. Suddenly you’re saying the same things everybody else does, even if you’ve never said them before. Out of your mouth unbidden come words like “at a high level” and “optics” and “Let’s run it up the flagpole.”

I’ve been paid to write corporate speeches, but today I wish to give back. Just for fun, I’m going to see how much jargon I can pack into a speech. I offer the result, gratis, to anyone in the position of, say, having to explain to a corporate team—a work family—that a re-structuring is at hand. Or that the team is no more. Indeed, I hereby offer the following, in whole or in part, to any executive called upon to say pretty much anything to anyone in any office. Here we go. . .

“THANK YOU ALL for gathering on such short notice.

“As you know, our core values have always been zero tolerance, equal opportunity, authentic disruption, and a diversity-and-inclusion program that serves mainly as a litigation shield. Our core strengths and transparent corporate values are baked into our culture, or vice-versa, or something.

"As a cisgendered, wealthy, privileged, tech-savvy, able-bodied, white anglocentric male who just happens to find himself in charge, I’m proud of our inclusive, equitable diverse talent. From day one we have sought to empower disruptive, actionable, best-in-class, strategically aligned team members. That’s why we on-boarded you. Unless we failed to on-board you because HR was on vacation, or otherwise occupied, or they forgot.

“Our mission, vision, promises, values, tactics, buckets, silos, core competencies, and on-trend best practices allowed us to reinvent the wheel, beat the bushes, and go after the low-hanging fruit. Actionable tactics and on-trend agile execution helped us move the needle—in the room, in the tent, and, as these remarks must remain, in the vault.

“I ASKED YOU here today to thank you. For drinking the Kool-Aid, for pushing the envelope, and for gaining traction. You drilled down, moved the goalposts, leveraged key learnings, connected the dots, funneled engagement, and identified pain points that ticked all the boxes. 

“Your brain dumps helped us do more with less. We trimmed the fat, raised the bar, and got the ball across the line by providing mission-critical organic growth and turn-key mentorship enterprise value as well as inclusive, authentic disruption, bells and whistles, and best-in-class thought leadership.

“You did everything you could to peel the onion, run it up the flagpole, and take it to the next level. You gave it 110 percent, and you knocked it out of the park! You killed it. I want you to take ownership of that. I simply can’t find the words to express my gratitude. Please give yourself and your teammates a round of applause.

“UNFORTUNATELY, even though you dug deep, built capacity, and punched above your weight, and even though you did a deep dive, stayed in your lane, and developed scalable best practices with next-level due diligence and inclusive authenticity, we’re forced to hit pause.

“Perhaps adding a strategically aligned but unbudgeted toolbox to our wheelhouse was an overly optimistic way of actioning high-level learnings. Still, you put out fires, put boots on the ground, and put lipstick on the pig.

“Our C-suite has done outside-the-box due diligence to kick the tires on cradle-to-grave, crowdsourced, game-changing pivots. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to find the secret sauce that would help us guesstimate a transparent path to culture-fit profitability.

“That’s because the new-normal, stopgap, resource-intensive bottom line and results-oriented just-in-time supply chain did not align with our core strengths, authentic culture, key messages, and corporate values in such a way as to show us a viable way forward.

“Did I mention that we’re losing a shitload of money?

“THE LATEST NUMBERS speak for themselves. At a high level, last year’s economic headwinds and post-COVID impacts signaled a buck-the-trend, paradigm-shifting lack of resource-intensive bandwidth where the rubber meets the road. Hence the need for de-structuring, which is like re-structuring except that re-structuring means firing some people and de-structuring means firing everyone, effective immediately. Including you.

“Let that sink in.

“Long story short: the only viable way to achieve necessary cost savings, generous, non-negotiable severance packages, and robust ongoing security oversight includes locked phones, locked computers, deactivated fobs, frozen corporate email accounts, and restricted elevator access above the sixth floor as of 4 p.m. this afternoon.

The security people who will accompany you to your office are for your own good, so that you don’t jeopardize future employment opportunities by leaving the building with something that doesn’t belong to you—like your iPhone or iPad or MacBook or game-changing $2,800 ergonomic chair—thus saddling yourself with a criminal record.

“State-of-the-art, best-in-class collapsible cardboard boxes have been provided for your personal effects. If you wish to dialogue with a member of our award-winning head-office transition experts, I ask that you take it offline, park it, table it, put a pin in it, reach out, touch base, circle back, and hop on a call.

“Bottom line: at the end of the day, we ran out of runway. Full stop.

“ON A PERSONAL note, I want you to know that I sincerely regret, expect, understand, appreciate, thank, think, hope, wish, and believe. In closing, let me be perfectly clear in stating what I think we can all agree is a values-based, strategically aligned, and authentic summation of this unfortunate situation:

“It is what it is.”

What business jargon did I miss? Let me know in the comments.

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