They don’t seem to mean anything but everyone uses them. They are part of the business language and their use is so prevalent that it is hard not for them to drop into conversation in any business context. Perhaps some of the reasons for their prevalence include the implicit assumption that they project an aura of competence: we sound awfully clever and in control of we can trot them off the tongue.

As humans we tend to imitate. One of the reasons is that we have this deep need to sound the same to be considered part of the team. We want to belong so we copy each other: We adopt similar intonation, inflections, prosody, and phrases. Pretty soon they are used at all levels of the organisation. A second reason is that we want to progress. If everyone at all levels uses these phrases then chances are we will also do so – if your boss is using them pretty soon you will too.

Apart from the obvious fact that we all end up sounding like moronic parrots, my issue with them is that they foster poor communication and poor thinking. The problem is they are not very original and we end up using them in a hackneyed fashion for a range of circumstances – many of them bearing little relevance to the choice of phrase. They are also open to such a broad range of interpretation that there is hardly any consistency of understanding between people on the receiving end. When I hear someone talk about team-player I will invariably have a very different picture in my head from you.

If we are too lazy to think about things in a unique way and simply repeat what everyone else is sprouting – then the quality of our thinking on other issues is likely to suffer too. Our thinking is literally constrained by the way we chose to phrase and articulate about the problems we are facing. If we want to think creatively we need to avoid these hackneyed phrases and find a more original way of talking and thinking.

I would love to confront the next person I hear using one of these but they will probably be someone who has some influence over my continued employment and advancement. So I will probably just smile and repeat the next one on the list.

My apologies if I offend you but here is my list of phrases I would prefer not to hear again:

1. organizational benchmark
2. paradigm shift
3. data-driven
4. a win-win
5. blue sky
6. green-field
7. clear-skin
8. team player
9. put that in the parking lot
10. let’s touch base
11. take this off-line
12. think outside the box
13. have the bandwidth
14. bench-strength
15. where the rubber meets the road
16. right-size
17. next-gen
18. turn-key
19. plug-and-play
20. boots on the ground
21. square the circle
22. synergize
23. step up to the plate
24. monetize
25. at the end of the day
26. put lipstick on this pig
27. putting a stake in the ground
28. t-it up
29. proactive
30. stick to our knitting
31. face some headwinds
32. incent it
33. do due diligence
34. leave money on the table
35. tear down the silos
36. move the needle
37. the old 80-20 rule
38. going forward
39. open door policy
40. scalable
41. best-of-breed
42. value-add
43. go-to-person
44. get some push-back
45. put our game face on
46. close the loop
47. low-hanging fruit
48. best practice
49. loop you in
50. peel back the onion
51. run with it
52. run it to ground
53. buy-in
54. leading edge
55. give 110%
56. take it to the next level