Professionals spend a lot of time in meetings. The average business person spends 25% of their work week in meetings, while middle managers can spend up to 2 days out of every week in meetings and executives a whopping 4 days a week! There’s a lot written on how to get the most out of meetings, and effectively utilize people’s time therein. This is not one of those posts. What follows is a look at some common phrases prevalent in corporate meetings, and a humorous take on what they mean.

Realignment of thinking

We just realized the core elements of our approach are shit, and we’re going back to the drawing board.

We need more interlock

I have no idea what you are doing, you likely have no idea what I am doing, and neither of us has any idea how what we do impacts the big picture.

Let’s take this offline

Wow this meeting is about to go off the rails OR we could come out looking bad if we discuss this in front of the larger group.

Moving forward

Let’s just tell them we’ll take care of it with the vaguest time frame possible, and no accountability.

Calibrate expectations

Yea we’re gunna be waaaay off whatever quantitative metric you asked us to hit.

Get more visibility

I probably should know more about this issue than I currently do, and I’ll fix that straight away.

Take a holistic approach

We’re gunna spend a TON of time planning out every last detail and by our next meeting, we’ll probably still be planning.

Reach out/ping/touch base

Similar to taking something offline, a vague agreement to discuss a topic once we both have our backs against the wall, and are absolutely forced to.

Streamline

There’s a lot of inefficiency in this process. We’ll agree to eliminate no less than 10% of it.

Paradigm shift

A moniker we’ll apply to this incrementally better new feature or product in hopes of getting some WOW factor with our target audience.

Honorable Mention

Synergy

Remember that thing we streamlined? Now we have synergy.  

Leverage

I could say “use” but I’m feeling sexy today.