Catch-phrase overuse a 'lose-lose' situation

December 28, 2004

BY MARY WISNIEWSKI Business Reporter

"Win-win" might have started out as a clever thing to say -- a short, cute, alliterative way of explaining that an event worked out well for everyone.

Then one day, it started to aggravate, like tinfoil on a metal filling. Suddenly, people who say "win-win" stopped sounding cool, and started sounding pompous.

A national survey of 150 senior executives at some of the nation's largest companies identified "win-win" and "get on the same page" as among the most annoying or overused phrases in the workplace.

SAY WHAT? Do these words make you want to throw bagels at your boss during meetings? These are some of the workplace words and phrases chosen by senior executives as most annoying or overused: * At the end of the day * Thinking outside the box * Synergy * Paradigm * Metrics * Take it offline * Redeployed people * On the runway * Win-win * Value-added * Get on the same page * Customer centric * Core competency Mary Wisniewski

Other worn-out idioms include "take it offline" and "thinking outside the box," according to the survey, commissioned by Accountemps, a California-based company that specializes in placement for financial professionals.

If you want to vex a linguistically sensitive colleague, you could say that your company's merger created synergies and a value-added paradigm that allows redeployed people to be more customer centric.

"Buzzwords and industry jargon are a form of shorthand," said Joanna Puglisi, Northbrook branch manager at Accountemps. "But they can be confusing to people outside the field, and when they're overused they lose their impact altogether."

Buzzwords can identify you as a member of an elite group, said Michael Silverstein, professor in the departments of linguistics and anthropology at the University of Chicago.

"When you can use those words fluently and seemingly convincingly, even if they don't mean anything, it adds a kind of authoritativeness to what you're saying," Silverstein said.

Like Eliza Doolittle pronouncing her "h"s in "My Fair Lady," people who want to make it in business use buzzwords to fit in, Silverstein said.

"The key thing to do is to start throwing in new ones so people say, 'Hey, this must be a new concept.' It gives the user a certain kind of cachet," Silverstein said.

Business is prone to buzzwords because, like football coaches, executives must give pep talks to the team, said David Mirza, associate professor of economics at Loyola University. These are often filled with catchy phrases that wear thin after a while.

"It's an attempt to motivate people rather than an attempt to explain," Mirza said. "When you're giving a pep talk, you want to motivate -- you don't want people to think too much."

Accountemps also identified some current, hip phrases, like "watercooler games" (co-worker discussions), "low-hanging fruit" (easy opportunities for new business) and "brain dump" (providing all the information on a subject) -- all likely to grow stale in a couple of years.