Business Words to Abolish in 2008

There is something about walking through the doors of any major business that turns normally well-spoken people into complete idiots. They may tell their kids, "get a coat, it's going to be cold," and by the time they get to work, they'll tell a coworker, "obtain a cloth thermal insulating system, a meteorogical event involving a decrease in the warmth system."

It's time to strike these words from our vocabulary and start speaking English again.

Associate

This term was coined to replace "employee". It is supposed to represent that the company is not a hierarchy, but one big happy family where everyone is equal, an associate of their fellow coworker.

Of course, this soon spawned these same companies referring to "leadership" and associates, making sure that people didn't get TOO comfortable thinking they could walk up to the CEO in the bathroom and tell them what they felt about the decision to acquire ACME industries.

Go back to employee.

Space

This term is used to describe an area or market, as in Apple is a major player in the portable music player space. Like many buzzwords, the problem is that if you take it away, what you're saying loses nothing.

When you start to talk about "space" in your business writing or on television, I start to wonder about the space between your ears.

Solution

When a dumpster company tells me that they're the leader in sanitation solutions, I start to worry. You collect trash. And frankly, trash has never been a problem because there are 5 or 10 different companies who will pick it up for me. With the exception of not putting my trash can back on the curb accurately, most of them do the same type of work. In recent years I've heard about people who offer "copier solutions", "IT solutions", "building solutions", and just about every other type of "solution" you could think of.

Again, you can eliminate the word and not lose the meaning of your sentence.

Customer focused or Consumer Centric