Management bulls**t phrases

[JRM]

V8mate said:

JRM said:

Not so much management speak, but after an hour of arguing in a meeting, I was asked to take the emotion out the discussion - felt like letting a four letter word tirade out

If that's how the feedback make you feel, you had clearly let emotion into your side of the argument.

Fair play to your colleague(s) for giving you an opportunity to carry on trying to make your point, just more appropriately.

I was waiting for someone to come up witha comment like that

[BarRefaeli]

HundredthIdiot said:

I've had this in dealings with lawyers, in the context of "thanks for the document, I will revert to you in due course".

It is apparently a valid use of the word:

"revert
1 verb When people or things revert to a previous state, system, or type of behaviour, they go back to it.
Jackson said her boss became increasingly depressed and reverted to smoking heavily. V to n
2 verb When someone reverts to a previous topic, they start talking or thinking about it again.
WRITTEN In the car she reverted to the subject uppermost in her mind. V to n
3 verb If property, rights, or money revert to someone, they become that person's again after someone else has had them for a period of time."

(2) or (3) are both arguably applicable.

I'd argue they're not. One doesn't (or shouldn't) revert to a person, but a "thing". It's not a replacement for "respond" which is how I've most often seen it used, eg "I will review and revert" makes no sense.

"thanks for the document, I will revert to its contents in due course" would be more acceptable.

Edited by BarRefaeli on Wednesday 3rd February 09:58

[JMGS4]

If anyone used such bullsh 1t sayings in my company they'd first get my boot up to the fifth lacehole in their Rse and on a second usage would immediately be fired for being a pratt....
WTF happened to using our beautiful language correctly... or is Britain all chav lowest common denominator now?

[alfa pint]

"Galvanise our activity to create a synthetic approach" came out on an e-mail from my boss last week.

Bearing in mind, I'm in the military, this caused an even greater wtf response from me and my weegie counterpart and immediate questioning and dictionary posting of definitions in order to prove that he was talking ste.

[Rollcage]

BarRefaeli said:

HundredthIdiot said:

I've had this in dealings with lawyers, in the context of "thanks for the document, I will revert to you in due course".

It is apparently a valid use of the word:

"revert
1 verb When people or things revert to a previous state, system, or type of behaviour, they go back to it.
Jackson said her boss became increasingly depressed and reverted to smoking heavily. V to n
2 verb When someone reverts to a previous topic, they start talking or thinking about it again.
WRITTEN In the car she reverted to the subject uppermost in her mind. V to n
3 verb If property, rights, or money revert to someone, they become that person's again after someone else has had them for a period of time."

(2) or (3) are both arguably applicable.

I'd argue they're not. One doesn't (or shouldn't) revert to a person, but a "thing". It's not a replacement for "respond" which is how I've most often seen it used, eg "I will review and revert" makes no sense.

"thanks for the document, I will revert to its contents in due course" would be more acceptable.

Edited by BarRefaeli on Wednesday 3rd February 09:58

Its the subject or object that does the reverting, not the person having the conversation.

The key is "returning to a previous state". A person cannot revert to a document - he has never been one!

Its a nonsensical usage of the word IMO, but then I am no scholar!

[wy906]

alfa pint said:

"Galvanise our activity to create a synthetic approach"

LOL

[hman]

JMGS4 said:

If anyone used such bullsh 1t sayings in my company they'd first get my boot up to the fifth lacehole in their Rse and on a second usage would immediately be fired for being a pratt....
WTF happened to using our beautiful language correctly... or is Britain all chav lowest common denominator now?

I like your approach, however you may have difficulty defending your actions at the tribunal.

If only being a pratt was a good enough reason for getting fired, imagine how many of these management bullstters would be on the dole..

[HundredthIdiot]

BarRefaeli said:

It's not a replacement for "respond" which is how I've most often seen it used, eg "I will review and revert" makes no sense.

Yes it does. "Revert" can mean to return possession of the thing, so "I will review the document and revert" means "I will review the document and return it to you".

BarRefaeli said:

"thanks for the document, I will revert to its contents in due course" would be more acceptable.

No, that doesn't make any sense. Revert does not mean return in the sense of coming back to something.

[Rollcage]

HundredthIdiot said:

BarRefaeli said:

It's not a replacement for "respond" which is how I've most often seen it used, eg "I will review and revert" makes no sense.

Yes it does. "Revert" can mean to return possession of the thing, so "I will review the document and revert" means "I will review the document and return it to you".

BarRefaeli said:

"thanks for the document, I will revert to its contents in due course" would be more acceptable.

No, that doesn't make any sense. Revert does not mean return in the sense of coming back to something.

"I will review the document and revert" means "I will look at the document and return myself to you" which obviously makes no sense.

"I will review the document and revert it" would make more sense, but would still be a rather tortuous usage of the word "Revert"

Edited by Rollcage on Wednesday 3rd February 13:49

[JMGS4]

hman said:

JMGS4 said:

If anyone used such bullsh 1t sayings in my company they'd first get my boot up to the fifth lacehole in their Rse and on a second usage would immediately be fired for being a pratt....
WTF happened to using our beautiful language correctly... or is Britain all chav lowest common denominator now?

I like your approach, however you may have difficulty defending your actions at the tribunal.
If only being a pratt was a good enough reason for getting fired, imagine how many of these management bullstters would be on the dole..

Obviously I'd have to fire them for another reason on paper (probably incompetency) however they'd be in no doubt what was the real reason!
PS thank goodness german law doesn't put up with PC whingeing!!!

Edited by JMGS4 on Wednesday 3rd February 13:55

[HundredthIdiot]

Rollcage said:

"I will review the document and revert" means "I will look at the document and return myself to you" which obviously makes no sense.

In order for the sentence to be unambiguous it requires restatement of the object. You are assuming that the object would be "I" and not "the document".

This seems like nitpicking.

Rollcage said:

...would still be a rather tortuous usage of the word "Revert"

I'm not saying it's elegant, but it is far from the sort of "lets run that one up the flagpole" bullsh!t which is the main subject of this thread.

[iggletiggle]

ive heard some classics over the past 12months:

We've got bigger cats to fry... (MD trying to say we have bigger fish to fry)

lets get round the table and blue sky..

blue sky

Going forward

touch base with..

[iggletiggle]

ive heard some classics over the past 12months:

We've got bigger cats to fry... (MD trying to say we have bigger fish to fry)

lets get round the table and blue sky..

blue sky

Going forward

touch base with..

[BarRefaeli]

HundredthIdiot said:

I'm not saying it's elegant, but it is far from the sort of "lets run that one up the flagpole" bullsh!t which is the main subject of this thread.

I will concede that it can be used correctly.
That's as far as I'll go.

However I am in agreement with Rollcage that it's not nitpicking for the "it" or object to need to be explicitly stated for it to make sense, in contrast to "return", for example.

FETA for example in your initial response to me you said you'd seen "Thanks for the document I will revert to you in due course". That's just nonsensical without the object. The object is reverted. "Return" can be applied to both the person and document so makes sense.

And I'm in even less agreement that it's not one for this thread, like all management speak it's used in situations that do not require it, simply to give the writer an affected air of self importance. There are other, more appropriate words that can be used.

Edited by BarRefaeli on Wednesday 3rd February 14:33

[ATG]

HundredthIdiot said:

BarRefaeli said:

It's not a replacement for "respond" which is how I've most often seen it used, eg "I will review and revert" makes no sense.

Yes it does. "Revert" can mean to return possession of the thing, so "I will review the document and revert" means "I will review the document and return it to you".

Revert always has the sense of "something returning to a state that it was in at some point in the past". It also has the sense of a considerable amount of time having past. But most importantly, it's an intransitive bloody verb. You might revert to a life of crime, for example. A piece of property might revert to you at the expiry of a lease, or on someone's death. Using "revert to you" as a transitive verb as in "I'm going to revert something to you" is utter bks. And "I'll revert to you" means "I will turn back into you". An interesting philosophical idea, but not what the bureaucratic twonks usually mean to say.

Edited by ATG on Wednesday 3rd February 22:00

[Driller]

Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

[Hooty]

Driller said:

Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

Yeah, 'put the anchors on that one'.

[Driller]

Hooty said:

Driller said:

Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

Yeah, 'put the anchors on that one'.

[Driller]

fk me, it worked

[Flatshift]

My boss came out with one last week.

Said "Think of the business as a bus. Now, we've got the right people on the bus, but it doesn't stop there. We have to find them their correct seats. My job as leader is to drive the bus in the correct direction."

What the fk? Did you just speak for like three minutes about a bus and not say a single word about product, the business or our customers?? And they pay you how much???

Driller said:

fk me, it worked

If you hadn't bumped it I'd never have seen it!!