The Ultimate List of 119 Most-Hated Business Buzzwords
What is a business buzzword, and what makes them the worst?
Words become annoying buzzwords when they get overused, frequently misused, or are just plain vague. Terms with a perfectly good plain-English counterpart are especially hated. It’s a classic mark of jargon! If there’s a different word that you would say if you weren’t at work, check yourself: you’re probably using business jargon.
Based on a recent TrustRadius survey of over 700 professionals, here is the ultimate list of the 119 most-hated business buzzwords. These corporate cliches, in order of most-mentioned to least-mentioned, are full of juicy jargon, vague terminology, obscure metaphors, and problematic turns of phrase.
The 119 Worst Business Buzzwords for 2020
- Synergy
- Think outside the box (and other variations, like “step out of the box,” an “out of the box” idea, etc.)
- Take it offline
- Circle back
- Low-hanging fruit
- At the end of the day
- Cloud, and cloud-based
- To not know what you don’t know
- Big Data
- Move the needle
- Leverage
- Agile
- Best Practice
- Digital transformation
- Deep dive
- Bandwidth
- Customer journey
- Moving forward–and its close cousin “going forward”
- Next level, up-level, level up
- Reach out
- Touch base
- Wheelhouse
- Disruptor
- Alignment / Aligned
- Right
- Bottom line
- Acronyms (FYI, ROI, KPI, etc.)
- Disruptive
- Value (as in value-add, driving value, value proposition, corporate values, or value drop)
- Ping
- Lean, and lean-in
- Paradigm (as in paradigm shift or breaking the paradigm)
- Partner–the verb (“Partner with us”) and the noun (“Business partner”)
- Ideate / Ideation
- Ask, used as a noun to mean “request”
- Learnings
- Holistic, especially in the phrase “Holistic approach”
- Culture (as in “company culture,” “corporate culture,” “startup culture,” or “creating a [inset adj. here] culture”)
- Thought leader / Thought leadership
- Content (whether “Content is king” or “snackable content”)
- Growth hacking (which is essentially just marketing)
- Buy-in
- Pain point
- Swimlane, or even just “lane,” particularly when someone is telling you to stay in yours.
- Best in class / Best of breed
- Game-changer
- Teamwork, team-building, and team-players
- Next-gen
- Hard stop
- ROI (“Return on investment”)
- IoT (“Internet of things”)
- Innovative
- Influencer
- Single pane of glass
- Customer-centric
- All hands on deck
- Net-net
- Put a pin in it
- Stakeholders
- Strategic
- Metrics
- Machine Learning
- Pivot
- On the same page
- Advertainment
- Collaboration
- Intelligence, whether it’s “artificial intelligence,” “business intelligence,” “emotional intelligence,” “market intelligence,” “competitive intelligence,” or otherwise.
- Automation
- Blockchain
- Intuitive
- Analytics
- Platform
- Open the kimono
- Unpack
- Giving 110%
- Tables of all sorts: table stakes, bringing something to the table, or tabling it for later
- Quick win
- Onboarding (and “get everyone on board”)
- Scrum
- Boil the ocean
- Story (in context of “storytelling,” “user stories,” or making a “long story short”)
- On your plate, or having a “full plate”
- 30,000 ft. view, 10,000 ft. view, and other escalations of a top-down view
- Core competency / Core capabilities
- Rockstar
- Loops: “looping back,” keeping someone “in the loop,” or the dreaded “feedback loop”
- Free, and even worse, freemium
- Blue sky
- Integration
- Engagement
- Actionable
- Efficiency
- Socialize
- Diversity
- Verticals
- Bio-break
- Bleeding edge
- Optimize
- Scalable
- Organic
- Omni-channel
- Empower
- Win-win
- Optics
- DevOps
- Data-driven
- In the weeds
- Double click (as in to “double-click” into something)
- On your radar
- Ducks in a row
- Drill down
- Space (as in “playing in” a particular “space”)
- Fast in various forms, such as “fast-paced,” “fail fast” or “cheap, fast, and good”
- Top of mind, mindfulness, and mindshare
- KPI (“Key performance indicator”)
- ASAP (“As soon as possible”)
- Giving back your time
- Per (“per se,” “per my last email,” etc.)
- FYI (“For your information”)
Whew! That’s a lot of jargon.
Why TrustRadius cares about business buzzwords
You might be asking yourself, “Why does a review site care about how many business buzzwords I hear every day at work?” Well, the words and feelings you have at work are the lifeblood of our business. That’s exactly what a review is, after all. (And ours are some of the longest in the industry–over 400 words on average.)
We’re in a unique position. We connect professionals who buy and use business technology with each other. We also connect them to the vendors that provide the products they use. There’s a lot of communication happening in those relationships. Some of it is on a one-to-one basis, but much of it is on a one-to-many basis.
The use of buzzwords in the tech industry is especially rampant. The tech marketing lingo vendors project to their prospects and customers is even worse. But this is exactly why people love reviews. They’re relatable, candid, and easy to read. They haven’t been run through a buzzwords marketing machine. Reviews are written by humans who have used the technology products for their own business, and have some advice to share.
We did this survey because words matter. In our business, we’ve seen that the more real, specific, accessible, and personal words are, the better results we (and our customers) get.
What do you think are the most annoying business buzzwords?
Did you see your (least) favorite term on the list? Or were the worst offenders missing? Take the survey for yourself here. You’ll be able to see how we sourced this list, and make sure your opinion gets heard!
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