Buzzwords that make boardrooms spin and PowerPoints sing.
A term stolen from telecommunications to describe how busy you are, because saying "I don't want to do that" requires emotional vulnerability. The human version of a loading bar stuck at 99 percent.
Something another company did once that worked and has now become an unquestionable commandment carved in corporate stone. The adult version of "but mom, everyone else is doing it."
The final financial result, and the only line anyone in the C-suite actually reads. Every other line in the report is just decoration leading up to the moment someone scrolls to the bottom and either smiles or updates their LinkedIn.
Getting people to agree with your idea, typically achieved through a combination of PowerPoint slides, free lunch, and mild intimidation. Without buy-in, your brilliant proposal is just a Google Doc that nobody starred.
Technology so new that adopting it will make your budget hemorrhage money while your IT department hemorrhages sanity. It's called bleeding edge because someone is always getting hurt.
Attempting something absurdly ambitious and fundamentally impossible, like trying to get everyone in accounting to agree on lunch. Used to shut down any idea that would require actual effort or imagination.
A crisis so urgent it forces immediate change, inspired by an oil rig disaster where workers chose to jump into freezing water rather than burn—cheerful stuff for Monday morning all-hands meetings.
The office nickname for anyone radiating maximum crankiness, whether from PMS, lack of coffee, or just their baseline personality setting. Gender-neutral despite the name, a bitter betty can strike anywhere, anytime, turning meetings into emotional minefields. They're the human equivalent of a Monday morning.
Short for Besloten Vennootschap, the Dutch version of a private limited liability company that's basically the Netherlands' answer to Germany's GmbH. You'll see "BV" tagged onto company names throughout the Low Countries, signaling that shareholders' personal assets are protected from corporate debts—because the Dutch love their legal structures almost as much as their bicycles.
Normal operations continuing despite chaos, crisis, or the fact that nothing about the current situation is remotely usual.
A group discussion focused on identifying who's responsible for a failure rather than solving the actual problem. Brainstorming's evil twin where everyone points fingers instead of generating ideas.
The corporate equivalent of a ruler that everyone uses to measure their inadequacy or superiority. It's either a standard against which everything else is evaluated, or a computer test that proves your new laptop is 0.3% faster than last year's model. Companies love benchmarks because they provide objective data to confirm subjective decisions they've already made.
A group of directors, trustees, or advisors who collectively govern an organization and make strategic decisions, theoretically. In practice, it's where senior executives gather quarterly to eat catered sandwiches and rubber-stamp decisions already made by the CEO. Board meetings: where PowerPoint presentations go to pretend they matter.
When something returns to bite you in ways you didn't anticipate, usually referring to strategies, policies, or decisions that backfire spectacularly. In HR and employment, it's also an employee who left the company only to return later, often for more money. The corporate equivalent of "I told you so" in physical form.
Someone with a supernatural ability to arrive exactly after all the hard work is finished, conveniently dodging effort while maintaining plausible deniability. The workplace phantom who materializes only when the moving truck is packed, the project is complete, or the cleaning is done.
A crude metric measuring productivity by physical presence in the office rather than actual output. The management philosophy that equates proximity to performanc—beloved by micromanagers everywhere.
A group creativity session where everyone throws ideas at the wall to see what sticks, usually involving whiteboards and someone saying 'there are no bad ideas' right before judging all the ideas. It's the corporate world's favorite way to democratize innovation while often producing committee-designed camels. When it works, it's brilliant; when it doesn't, it's just a really expensive meeting.
The internal rules an organization creates to govern itself, like a corporation's personal constitution that nobody reads until there's a fight. These self-imposed regulations cover everything from meeting procedures to officer duties. Basically, the fine print that tells everyone how the sausage gets made.
The total weight of all living stuff in a given area, or vegetation we're planning to burn for energy because 'renewable fuel' sounds better than 'burning plants.' Scientists measure it to understand ecosystems; energy companies cultivate it to feel better about carbon emissions. It's essentially the collective mass of life, now with sustainability buzzword status.
The act of voting against someone's admission to a group or organization, historically done by dropping a black ball into a ballot box. It's the original cancel culture, giving members the power to veto new applicants with total anonymity. Today it's evolved to mean excluding or boycotting someone, usually for reasons ranging from legitimate to pettily vindictive.
Ideation unconstrained by practical limitations like budgets, reality, or physics. Where you pretend anything is possible before constraints murder your dreams.
Obstacles preventing progress on a project, ranging from technical issues to Steve from Accounting who won't approve anything. The scapegoats for why you're behind schedule.
To incorporate something into a plan or system from the beginning, as if you're making a cake and not just making excuses for poor planning. Usually said about features that will definitely be forgotten.
A meeting where people throw out ideas with reckless abandon, theoretically without judgment, though Janet from accounting will definitely judge your suggestion later. Originally meaning a sudden brilliant idea, it's evolved into a structured creative session where the goal is quantity over quality—because somewhere in those 47 terrible ideas might be one decent one. It's democracy applied to problem-solving, with similar levels of efficiency.