ALAP As Late As Possible. The practice of meeting a deadline at the last possible moment so you do not receive additional work. "He finished it two days ago, but he'll submit it ALAP."
Alpha Geek Manager of the Information Technology (IT) Department "We'll have to put that request in to the Alpha Geek."
Big Learn When you are expected to attain skills that are difficult to master."That new software is a big learn."
Bleeding-Edge Something even more current than the 'cutting-edge'. Somewhat risky. "The R&D people give us all this bleeding-edge stuff to make into products."
Boot Camp A company or product training program. "Next Thursday morning is Boot Camp for the new accounting system."
Break Your Crayons To harm or insult another person. "I don't mean to break your crayons, but that design is pretty substandard."
Capsizing From boating: laying off or losing so many employees that the company cannot operate. "With no one left to take telephone orders, we're close to capsizing."
Career Limiting Move (CLM) An action or comment that could stall the future progression of your career. Carrots and Sticks Incentives positive and negative. "If we want performance from an employee, Which comes first, the carrot or the stick?"
Change Agent Any process or person which works as a catalyst for improvement. "That consultant's got a bag full of new sales management software he wants us to try."
Charm School New or additional manager training. "They're sending all the bosses back to charm school because of that one harrassment case."
Chasing Down Smokestacks Making sales calls to manufacturing companies. "If we don't make our quota here in downtown, it's back to chasing down smokestacks."
Cleans up well A technician or software developer who can actually speak with the customer without driving away sales. "He's not a great programmer, but he cleans up well."
Commonplate V. To present a topic so that all members of a group have the same information, eating from "a common plate." "He'd always commonplate the issue so he could get unanimous buy-in early."
Cowboy A worker who is difficult to predict or to supervise. Pre-2000: “loose cannon.” "Beetelwig is a bright guy, but a bit of a cowboy."
Dial and smile Phone calls to a list of prospects with the goal of getting new customers. Also: “Smile and dial.” "I always finish a project ALAP. Otherwise it's smile and dial for the afternoon."
Digerati An elite group of people that know more about computers than God. "The Digerati got freak-out when lightning took down the network."
Ear Candy Flattery. "She's angry at everyone today. I think we should try some ear candy."
Empty Suits Middle management with no decision-making power. "You can't get anywhere taking a new idea to the empty suits."
Exploding Offer A job offer that expires after a certain date. "Well, I got the job if I want it, but it's an exploding offer by next week, which means I couldn't finish the interview with this other place I really like>"
Feature Creep The tendency to continually add more features during the development of a product. "This continual feature creep is going to turn a good cell phone into a bad computer."
Flight Risk Originally from the criminal courts, now an employee that is thought to be considering quitting. "They are being nice to him and picking his brain because they think he's a flight risk."
Future-proof A product that will not quickly become obsolete. "The great thing about a pencil is that it's probably future proof."
Flying Circus A flight by company management to inspect remote operations "It will be fun around here next week with all the suits in the Flying Circus."
Gain Traction To increase a company's market share or the attention paid to an idea or person. "We're starting to gain traction with those matched his-and-hers umbrellas."
Ghost Work The uncompleted tasks that departed employees leave for the rest. "She left those accounts payable in her ghost work."
GranularIn excessive detail. "Don't be too granular; just round off to two zeros."
Head Shunting The secret hiring of a recruiter,or "head hunter," to persuade an ineffectual employee to take a position at another firm. Eliminates need for firing. "Poison Polly could be a candidate for head shunting."
Helicopter View A non-granular overview or summary. "I've just got about 20 seconds so give me the helicopter view."
InsourcingThe practice of actually looking within the company for someone with required skills "You know, if we can't pay very much we may have to resort to insourcing that skill."
Issues Around A less-direct way of saying "Problems with." "There are issues around working from a park bench."
Lateraled To be transferred to another position at your current level. May come from American Football. "He didn't get that promotion to supervisor. Instead, he was lateraled to another department."
Lipstick on a pig An attempt to put a favorable spin on a negative situation. His sales are pathetic, but he puts lipstick on the pig by saying he's expanded his network of friends this year."
Low decision latitude The inability to make any important choices."Empty suits have low decision latitude."
Macromanager A manager that tries to direct matters outside of her department. Opposite of micromanager. "All we need is for Manufacturing to be the macromanager for Purchasing as well."
Making Sausage When employees discuss potential financial gains from a customer in the presence of that customer. "You're good at being chummy with customers, but the stupiest thing you can do is to make sausage with them standing right there."
Malicious obedience Following company instructions explicitly, while hoping for failure."His people smile and do exactly what they are told in malicious obedience, while watching their efforts fail completely."
Mouse potato Business equivalent of the couch potato, spending hours and hours in front of the computer. "Peter's a mouse potato, and he always brings his own lunch so he can game over lunchtime."
Net-net The verbally communicated summary of a lengthy event. Originally from finance, net profits after net expenditures. "Skip the details, and just give me the net-net."
No scraps hit the floor Competitors will always replace inefficient firms. "In a market like pizza, no scraps hit the floor."
North of More than, or on the positive side of. "They're valuing that little start-up company at north of 20 million dollars."
Offline Used in business meetings to mean later, in private. "We should talk about those specific issues offline."
Parachute inTo send someone to complete work at an off-site location. "They'll never figure out how to get that system on line
Parking lot V. To end the discussion of a particular item in a meeting with the intention of addressing it later, presumably in the parking lot. "Sorry, we've got to give up this room. Jack, we're going to have to parking lot your ideas on that."
Peer management The art of interacting with difficult coworkers. "His solemn glare works well in peer management."
Phone it in To complete a task without much effort. "He was glad to take that area he worked on last year, because now he can just phone it in."
Ping From Internet technology. To briefly contact or notify. "You may want to ping marketing before we okay the ads for this product."
PopulateTo fill out a paper form, an analogy. "We'll need to populate the references section of that proposal."
Prairie dogging The simultaneous pop-up of several heads when something interesting is happening in your area. "When someone innocently mentioned free pizza, you should have seen the prairie dogging."
Serial entrepreneur A person who starts several (not necessarily successful) business ventures. "He's trying to raise money for another company now, a real serial entrepreneur."
True North The business direction that leads to success. "We've got to price this product to True North."
Wallpaper a meeting To include individuals that agree with your position. "We've invited the salespeople in to wallpaper our product positioning meeting."
WIFM What's In it For Me (pronounced 'wiffim'). "It's a good idea, but where's my WIFM."
WhiteboardTo convey information by writing it out on a presentation surface. "We'd better whiteboard your findings at the manager's meeting."
Zombie project A project that keeps coming back to life no matter how many times that it's terminated. "Is there ever going to be a product coming out of this Zombie project."
BizIdioms Pre-2000 | BizEng Copyright 2007 BizEngTM