MEMO to SOHO: Don’t cry when you peel the onion
by Yeoh Siew Hoon
Being a SOHO (Small Office Home Office) owner, I quite like the occasional outing with friends who work in BOHO (Big Office High-Rise Office) organisations.
This is because through them, I can live vicariously the cut and thrust of the corporate world and learn the latest buzzwords in the corridors of power.
BOHO workers, you see, spend a lot of time in meetings where they spend a lot of time listening while playing surreptitiously with their mobiles under the table or their laptops – I am told wi-fi’s the best thing since sliced bread for them because they can actually now work while attending meetings.
Anyway, here are some of the new buzzwords and phrases I picked up from them.
• Organic growth
That’s growth that happens when your company just grows naturally and not through buying or merging with someone. It’s a term that’s borrowed from the latest craze in the food world – organic food, meaning vegetables that just grow naturally without the aid of pesticides or chickens that have not been pumped full of steroids.
It can be used like this: “We believe in organic growth because, at the end of the day, it’s the most natural way to grow and, bottom line is, it’s in our stakeholders’ interests to deliver win-win benefits for all.â€
This is as opposed to “inorganic growth†where you grow by buying someone who doesn’t want to be bought and, in the long run, it could give you serious indigestion.
• Next step. Consumer insight. Value add. Moving forward.
This was uttered in one sentence during a meeting I did not get to attend.
What I think it means.
Next step – because we can’t sit here all day and just talk
Consumer insight – let’s find out what others think because we don’t know
Value add – so we can increase our prices
Moving forward – going backwards is not an option
• “The road ahead will be difficult. However, we are confident that we have the right strategy going forward. It is time for us all to rise to the challenge.â€
This appeared in an email.
What I think it means: “Get with the agenda or be fired.â€
To shortcut my learning, I turned to the Internet and picked up more corporate buzzwords.
Here are some phrases for you to use in that next BOHO meeting.
“We need more bandwidth to deliver a broad-based, client-focused solution that will not only address the big picture but also fast track our game plan of achieving industry-specific deliverables.â€
“We need to go the extra mile for our customers, play hard ball with our competitors, think outside the box, expand our knowledge base and be a world class team.â€
“If you peel back the onion and do a gap analysis, you will find that we need to be more proactive, focus on our core business, prioritise our service offerings and upscale our productivity.â€
Fancy sharing some buzzwords with us? Send them to [email protected].
Read more of Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at the Transit Cafe – www.thetransitcafe.com
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