In the Future

I would happily ban many words for many different reasons. They annoy me in their misuse or imprecise use or their desperation to sound more important than they are. I am referring, of course, to management speak.

The managers pretty much everywhere are worse than they were 40 plus years ago when I started work. They have, in the main, degrees, arrogance or at least a huge measure of self confidence, and absolutely no ability to communicate with the people they are supposed to lead. This is because they have, in the vast majority of cases, never done the same job themselves. In education and healthcare in particular, they only look at their pay and bonuses and as long as they come in at a good rate they shrug off problems for their staff as a price worth paying.

The worst examples of management speak are those that no actual human beings use. Words like synergy or phrases like circle back are nonsense that they lap up when talking to each other. What they don’t realise is that it makes them sound ridiculous to the non management staff, but as they earn much more money they don’t care. They sit in their offices and try to give off the energy of a CBBC presenter but ultimately achieve nothing. So, from all the rubbish they spout, which is the phrase that I would ban? Going Forward is like squeaky chalk on a blackboard to me as it’s a way of trying to get people to imagine that they are making progress when none is apparent. The phrase would be replaced by ‘in the future’.