Definition

A professional expert hired at exorbitant rates to tell organizations what their own employees already knew but couldn't get anyone to listen to. These specialized advisors swoop in with PowerPoint presentations and industry buzzwords, offering solutions that range from genuinely insightful to 'have you tried turning it off and on again?' The business world's favorite expensive band-aid for avoiding internal accountability.

Example Usage

We hired a consultant for $300 an hour to fix our workflow issues, and he recommended exactly what Sarah from accounting suggested six months ago for free.

Source: Business terminology

Related Terms

Beginner

wholesale

The art of selling massive quantities of stuff to retailers who then jack up the price and sell it to you, the sucker at the end of the chain. It's the business model that keeps Costco in business and makes you feel smart for buying 47 rolls of paper towels at once. Essentially, it's bulk selling before things get marked up for "presentation" and "convenience."

💼 Corporate / Business
Beginner

Circle Back

The corporate equivalent of saying "I'm absolutely never going to address this again but I want you to feel heard right now." A phrase that has killed more action items than any layoff in history.

💼 Corporate / Business
Advanced

zero-sum game

A situation where one party's gain is exactly balanced by another party's loss, resulting in no net change. The opposite of win-win, but arguably more honest about how most business negotiations actually work.

💼 Corporate / Business
Beginner

brainstorming

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.

💼 Corporate / Business
Beginner

KPI

Key Performance Indicator: a number that determines your worth as a human being every quarter. The corporate equivalent of a video game score, except nobody is having fun and the prizes are just more KPIs.

💼 Corporate / Business👥 Human Resources
Intermediate

Coworker Music

The audio wallpaper of corporate America—mainstream, impossibly inoffensive tracks that soundtrack your soul-crushing 9-to-5. Think Maroon 5, Imagine Dragons, and every song that's ever played in a Target. It's the musical equivalent of beige walls: designed to exist in the background while offending absolutely no one, serving as conversational filler for colleagues who've run out of weather-related small talk.

💼 Corporate / Business

Translate This Term

See “consultant” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

Try the Translator

Share This Term

Post on XShare on FacebookShare on LinkedIn

Discover a Term

Beginner

clutchly

The describe something that is clutch...