So I sent her an email about something, ending with the (admittedly VERY lame line) - "I just wanted to keep you in the loop on this". So she replies, "in the future, please include me on emails about this. It is VERY important that I be kept in the loop" Really. (Or as Seth and Amy might say, "REALLY?!") First of all, the whole "kept in the loop" statement really makes no sense. Or rather, if it does make sense, it doesn't speak well to corporate efficiencies. Going back to my days learning programming languages (or for anyone who has driven in Europe), getting in and staying in a loop is not exactly a good thing. A loop is a series of redundancies - think the Griswalds in "European Vacation". Look kids, Big Ben, Parliament. So the asinine statement is that I want to get and keep you in a loop - never really advancing the topic forward. And yet, that is so unbelievably accurate at a large corporation. All we seem to do is spend time going round and round, never really making the necessary progress to actually accomplish anything. Again, maybe it is my industry, and I have worked at a few companies in this space, all with the same practices.
The other asinine part of that reply is that what the hell does she think I was doing if not keeping her in the loop. I mean REALLY?! One could read the email and note that, yes based on the fact that I copied you, and called your attention to the issue at hand, I was trying to "keep you in the loop". But then, I actually said LITERALLY, my intent was to "keep you in the loop"! She then saw fit to take the time, and the digital resources necessary to reply that I needed to do something that I was already doing. And I wonder why I have these dents on my forehead that align with similar dents on my desk!
But back to my original point, there are so many statements, such as "keep in the loop" that are just lame, if not wholly inaccurate or otherwise unintelligent. Maybe they meant something at some point, kind of like the Appendix. But, like the appendix, they are no longer of use and are in fact nothing more than a ticking timebomb (to your sanity, not necessarily your intestinal health). Why do we do it to ourselves? Again, do we feel so insecure that we have to use these words/phrases to somehow sound more intelligent? Do we not have a simpler, or at least less lame, way of saying it? Or is it just a matter of being blind followers - somebody else said it once, and we figure it must be THE thing to say? I don't know, but either way, I'm tired of them and think one of two things should be done about it.
One option, banish them forever from our vernacular. Quit, cold turkey. No longer use the words and phrases that are so incredibly lame that they never should have existed in the first place.
Or...
The other option is to go ahead and use them at every possible opportunity, even when they don't come close to fitting the given situation. I think that is the option I choose. To use them early and often. Try to be the first to throw them out in the conversation, and then combine them in as many random permutations as possible. Maybe that will lead to their demise.
So without further adieu, here is my ongoing list of completely asinine corporate words, phrases and concepts that need to be banished forever:
- keep in the loop
- paradigm shift
- ecosystem
- think outside of the box
- spend a lot of cycles
- slide deck
- synergy
- touchbase
- take something offline
- parking lot (a topic of discussion)
- PowerPoint (ok, not a word or phrase, but seriously, we have got to eliminate PowerPoint forever. The LAMEST application ever.)
