Have You Heard the Buzz? — A Few Words on Some of the Latest Business Buzzwords

Freshing Up My Buzzword Vocabulary to Understand My Business Clients — But Should Freelancers Use Them?

The other day I was speaking on the phone with a potential freelance prospect and, after describing the work he needs, he asked me, “What’s currently in your wheelhouse?”

What? My wheelhouse? I thought I’d heard all the buzzwords, but that was a new one.

I faked understand what he was asking me. But when I got off the call, I looked up the word.

The definition seems incongruent to the conversation I’d just had.

Wheelhouse, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means “a structure enclosing a large wheel, e.g., a water-wheel; specifically, a house or superstructure containing the steering-wheel, a pilot-house, the paddle-box of a steam-boat.”

Worse, that’s sure not what I thought my potential client was talking about! But at least I’m not alone.

“Wheelhouses are small spaces with excellent visibility, where the skipper is in control of the boat and prepared to face any dangers that it might encounter. In a wheelhouse, a boat’s pilot can practice his ‘core competencies’ in an area with lots of ‘blue ocean’ and the opportunity for plenty of ‘blue-sky thinking.’”

“Whenever someone wants to say, ‘We would be good at this,’ or ‘We have potential here,’ they say, ‘This is in our wheelhouse. What they mean is, ‘This is a promising area for expansion.’”

What the Heck is a Wheelhouse?

So what exactly do businesspeople mean when they use the word?

Watson offered a theory.

“Wheelhouses are small spaces with excellent visibility, where the skipper is in control of the boat and prepared to face any dangers that it might encounter. In a wheelhouse, a boat’s pilot can practice his ‘core competencies’ in an area with lots of ‘blue ocean’ and the opportunity for plenty of ‘blue-sky thinking.’”

“Whenever someone wants to say, ‘We would be good at this,’ or ‘We have potential here,’ they say, ‘This is in our wheelhouse. What they mean is, ‘This is a promising area for expansion.’”

What Exactly is it with Buzzwords? — Are They Evil or Clever Ways to Communicate?

Many people pick on buzzwords, treating them like pieces of chewed up gum sticking to a shoe.

Yet, good or bad, they persist in the business world.

Here’s an explanation for why from an article in the Chicago Tribune last May:

“I think business words are a bit like those horrible illnesses that people catch on airplanes and cruise ships,” explained Martha Brockenbrough, author of Things That Make Us (Sic): The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar Takes on Madison Avenue, Hollywood, the White House, and the World (St. Martin’s Press).

“You’re sitting there, just trying to get where you need to be, and someone nearby is either honking into a Kleenex or puking over the railing. The next thing you know, you’re spewing forth in similar fashion.”

Ouch!

What Words Are Buzzing Loudest in Today’s Business World?

Here are few of Watson’s Buzzwords of the Week from the past couple of years.

1. Bucketize. In 2005, bucketize burst free from the technical world and exploded on the global jargon stage, where it was quickly embraced by boardroom buzzwordistas who embraced it as an interesting, edgy way of saying “categorizing,” “sorting,” “organizing,” “classifying,” or “pigeonholing.”

2. Pain Point. The moment at which a situation becomes so irritating that a consumer feels compelled to seek out a remedy; in other words, when you get out of the chair and try to fix the problem.

3. Rightsizing. On the surface, rightsizing suggests a pleasant process, akin to getting a suit altered or having your home remodeled. But while it has developed some more attractive usages, rightsizing originally referred to cuts and layoffs, and that’s the way it’s most often employed.

4. Tent Pole. This term refers to a company’s most promising or prominent product. Generally, a tent pole generates most of an organization’s income, making it possible for workers to make products that may be less profitable. However, long poles sometimes indicate an organization’s biggest problem or most prominent feature.

5. Blue Ocean. Coined by business professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, the term came to prominence with their 2005 book, Blue Ocean Strategy. As a method for business leaders to inject creativity into their companies, the blue ocean perspective divides business environments into two categories: red oceans and blue oceans. Red oceans are filled with “sharks,” desperate businesses that are fighting each other for a few bloody scraps of market share. Blue oceans, by comparison, have little or no competition.

Should Freelance Writers Use Buzzwords?

Personally, I find buzzwords somewhat useful. They are a kind of shorthand to express ideas and concept.

What’s more, if the businesspeople I’m working for use them, then I feel that I should speak their language.

Where I draw the line is using them in written communications.

It’s one thing to throw them around in a conversation during a meeting, and another to commit them to black and white.

For one thing, a document filled with buzzwords ensures you can’t (or shouldn’t) ever use that document as an example of your work.

What do you think about buzzwords? Which do you hear most? Which do you hate most?

Tagged as: buzzwords, freelance writer