Corporate Jargon Glossary — Buzzwords Explained in Plain English

Corporate language exists to sound decisive while committing to as little as possible. That makes it efficient for the speaker and expensive for everyone else. Each entry below gives you three things: what the word actually means in plain English, how it is used at Copmany (our fictional firm, where every buzzword is taken to its logical conclusion), and an example of it in a sentence, as overheard in a meeting.

Search 58 terms

A

Action item

Plain English: A specific task agreed in a meeting, with a person responsible for doing it.
At Copmany: The principal output of a meeting. A meeting without action items is reclassified as a conversation and is not billable.
In a sentence: “Let’s capture that as an action item and assign an owner offline.”

Agile

Plain English: A way of working in short cycles (often two-week “sprints”), delivering small pieces of work and adjusting based on feedback, rather than following one long fixed plan.
At Copmany: A methodology adopted firm-wide in a single, fixed, eighteen-month waterfall programme.
In a sentence: “We’re agile now, so the roadmap is locked until Q4.”

Alignment

Plain English: Agreement among the people involved about goals, priorities, or a decision.
At Copmany: A state achieved when everyone has seen the slide. Disagreement discovered after alignment is called “misalignment” and requires a further alignment session.
In a sentence: “Before we decide anything, let’s get alignment on what we’re deciding.”

B

Bandwidth

Plain English: A person’s available time or capacity to take on work.
At Copmany: A resource that is always low when asked for and always high when assigned.
In a sentence: “I don’t have the bandwidth this week, but I’ve accepted the meeting.”

Best practice

Plain English: A method generally accepted as the most effective way of doing something, often because many organisations do it.
At Copmany: Whatever the previous client did, presented to the next client.
In a sentence: “Industry best practice is to do what everyone else is doing, slightly later.”

Blue-sky thinking

Plain English: Creative thinking that ignores current constraints such as budget or practicality.
At Copmany: Thinking conducted in a room with no windows. Constraints are re-introduced in the following meeting by Finance.
In a sentence: “This is a blue-sky session, so no idea is a bad idea until procurement sees it.”

Boil the ocean

Plain English: To attempt something impossibly large, or to make a task far bigger than it needs to be.
At Copmany: What other firms do. Copmany heats the ocean incrementally, in phases, on a time-and-materials basis.
In a sentence: “Let’s not boil the ocean — just analyse every customer for the last ten years.”

Buy-in

Plain English: Support or agreement from the people who need to approve, fund, or carry out a plan.
At Copmany: The emotional precondition for a purchase order.
In a sentence: “We need buy-in from the business before we tell the business what we’ve decided.”

C

Circle back

Plain English: To return to a topic later, usually because it can’t be resolved now.
At Copmany: A polite way of ensuring a topic is never returned to. Topics circled back to more than three times are placed in the parking lot.
In a sentence: “Great question. Let’s circle back on that.”

Core competency

Plain English: The thing an organisation does best and that gives it an advantage over competitors.
At Copmany: Everything, per the capabilities deck. In practice: decks.
In a sentence: “Our core competency is identifying our core competencies.”

D

Deck

Plain English: A slide presentation, typically in PowerPoint or Google Slides.
At Copmany: The fundamental unit of value at Copmany. All work is either a deck, about a deck, or in preparation for a deck.
In a sentence: “Can you send the deck ahead of the call so nobody reads it?”

Deep dive

Plain English: A detailed, thorough examination of a specific subject.
At Copmany: A meeting of 60 minutes, of which 50 are spent on the agenda for the next deep dive.
In a sentence: “Let’s schedule a deep dive into why the last deep dive ran over.”

Deliverable

Plain English: A tangible output that must be handed over as part of a project — a report, a piece of software, a plan.
At Copmany: A PDF. Occasionally a second PDF.
In a sentence: “The key deliverable is a framework for identifying future deliverables.”

Disrupt

Plain English: To change an industry or market fundamentally, usually with a new technology or business model that displaces established players.
At Copmany: To rename an existing product.
In a sentence: “We’re disrupting the stapler space with a subscription stapler.”

Drill down

Plain English: To look at something in increasing levels of detail.
At Copmany: To open a tab in the spreadsheet that nobody has opened before.
In a sentence: “If we drill down into the numbers, they become smaller numbers.”

E

Ecosystem

Plain English: The network of partners, suppliers, customers, and products that surround and interact with a business.
At Copmany: A word used to make a list of vendors sound alive.
In a sentence: “We’re building an ecosystem of partners who invoice us.”

Empower

Plain English: To give people the authority, resources, or confidence to make decisions and act on their own.
At Copmany: To assign someone responsibility without assigning them budget.
In a sentence: “We’re empowering teams to own outcomes, subject to sign-off.”

G

Game changer

Plain English: Something that significantly alters how a situation or industry works.
At Copmany: Any initiative that has not yet been evaluated.
In a sentence: “This new expense-approval form is an absolute game changer.”

Going forward

Plain English: From now on; in the future.
At Copmany: A phrase appended to any sentence to indicate that the speaker is facing the correct direction.
In a sentence: “Going forward, let’s make sure we say ‘going forward’ less, going forward.”

Granular

Plain English: Very detailed; broken down into small parts.
At Copmany: The level of detail at which a question becomes someone else’s question.
In a sentence: “Without getting too granular, can you walk us through every line?”

H

Hard stop

Plain English: A fixed time at which a person must leave a meeting, regardless of whether it has finished.
At Copmany: A statement of status. The more senior the attendee, the harder the stop.
In a sentence: “Just flagging I have a hard stop at quarter past, so let’s start with introductions.”

Headwinds

Plain English: External conditions that make progress harder, such as an economic slowdown.
At Copmany: The reason results were lower. (When results are higher, see “execution.”)
In a sentence: “Despite macro headwinds, we delivered a resilient quarter of resilience.”

Holistic

Plain English: Considering the whole of something rather than just its individual parts.
At Copmany: Including more slides.
In a sentence: “We need to take a more holistic view — can we add an appendix?”

I

Ideate

Plain English: To generate ideas, usually in a structured brainstorming session.
At Copmany: To place sticky notes on a wall in a sequence later photographed and never consulted.
In a sentence: “We ideated for two days and landed on the idea we came in with.”

Impactful

Plain English: Having a significant effect.
At Copmany: Approved for use in all deliverables, particularly where the impact cannot be measured.
In a sentence: “It was a really impactful offsite. The lunch, especially.”

K

KPI

Plain English: Key Performance Indicator: a measurable value used to track progress towards a goal.
At Copmany: A number chosen after the results are known.
In a sentence: “Our main KPI this quarter is the number of KPIs we track.”

L

Learnings

Plain English: Lessons learned from an experience, especially a failure.
At Copmany: The plural form of a mistake.
In a sentence: “The project didn’t launch, but the learnings were enormous.”

Leverage

Plain English: To use something you already have — a resource, skill, or relationship — to greater advantage. (In finance, it also means using borrowed money.)
At Copmany: To use. Copmany does not use anything; it leverages it.
In a sentence: “Let’s leverage the existing template by copying it.”

Low-hanging fruit

Plain English: The easiest tasks or opportunities, which deliver results with little effort.
At Copmany: Fruit already picked by the previous consultancy, reharvested and presented in a new colour.
In a sentence: “Phase one targets the low-hanging fruit. Phase two discovers there is no tree.”

M

Mission-critical

Plain English: Essential to the core purpose or survival of an organisation or project.
At Copmany: Any task requested by a Senior Partner after 6 p.m.
In a sentence: “The font change on slide 14 is mission-critical.”

Move the needle

Plain English: To make a noticeable, measurable difference.
At Copmany: To make a difference visible on a chart, with the y-axis adjusted accordingly.
In a sentence: “It’s a great idea, but will it move the needle? And which needle?”

N

North star

Plain English: A single guiding goal or metric that steers an organisation’s decisions over the long term.
At Copmany: A star that is reselected annually at the strategy offsite.
In a sentence: “Customer delight is our north star. Margin is our other north star.”

O

Offline

Plain English: Outside the current meeting — usually in a smaller, separate conversation.
At Copmany: Where real decisions are made. Meetings are held online so that decisions can be taken offline.
In a sentence: “Let’s take that offline — it’s a bit sensitive for a meeting about it.”

Operationalise

Plain English: To turn an idea or strategy into practical, day-to-day processes.
At Copmany: To hand a strategy to a different department.
In a sentence: “Great strategy. Who’s going to operationalise it?” (Silence.)

P

Pain point

Plain English: A specific problem or frustration experienced by customers or employees.
At Copmany: An opportunity for a workshop.
In a sentence: “The customer’s pain point is that they keep being asked about their pain points.”

Paradigm shift

Plain English: A fundamental change in the underlying assumptions or approach to something.
At Copmany: A change in template.
In a sentence: “Moving the stand-up from 9:00 to 9:15 represents a paradigm shift.”

Parking lot

Plain English: A list of topics raised in a meeting that are set aside to be dealt with later.
At Copmany: The final resting place of all difficult questions. The Copmany parking lot is the largest in the Tri-State Region.
In a sentence: “Good point — let’s put it in the parking lot.”

Ping

Plain English: To send someone a quick message or reminder.
At Copmany: A message requiring immediate attention, sent in place of a meeting, followed by a meeting about the message.
In a sentence: “I’ll ping you on Slack and then we can jump on a call.”

Pivot

Plain English: To change strategy or direction significantly, especially after the original plan has not worked.
At Copmany: To fail, forwards.
In a sentence: “We’re not shutting the product down — we’re pivoting it to nothing.”

Q

Quick win

Plain English: A small improvement that can be achieved fast and shows visible progress.
At Copmany: Something achieved in week one and announced in weeks two through twenty.
In a sentence: “We’ve delivered three quick wins, including the project logo.”

R

Reach out

Plain English: To contact someone.
At Copmany: To contact someone, with feeling.
In a sentence: “I just wanted to reach out and circle back on my previous outreach.”

Right-size

Plain English: To change the size of something — very often a workforce — to what is considered appropriate.
At Copmany: A euphemism. The direction is rarely up.
In a sentence: “We’re right-sizing the team to better reflect the size of the team.”

Run it up the flagpole

Plain English: To present an idea to others to see how they react before committing to it.
At Copmany: To forward an email to someone more senior and wait.
In a sentence: “Let’s run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.”

S

Scalable

Plain English: Able to grow — handle more customers, users, or volume — without a proportional increase in cost or effort.
At Copmany: Able to be sold again.
In a sentence: “The approach is fully scalable: we can do it badly at any size.”

Socialise

Plain English: To share an idea or proposal informally with people before a formal decision, to gather feedback and build support.
At Copmany: To show a deck to people individually so that nobody objects collectively.
In a sentence: “Let’s socialise the reorg before we announce the reorg.”

Stakeholder

Plain English: Anyone with an interest in, or affected by, a project or decision: employees, customers, investors, managers, regulators.
At Copmany: Anyone who might later say they weren’t consulted.
In a sentence: “We’ve mapped 140 stakeholders on a two-by-two.”

Steerco

Plain English: Short for steering committee: a group of senior people who oversee a project and make key decisions about it.
At Copmany: A fortnightly ritual at which a project is steered towards the next steerco.
In a sentence: “We can’t decide that now — it needs to go to Steerco.”

Streamline

Plain English: To make a process simpler and more efficient, usually by removing unnecessary steps.
At Copmany: To add a step that reviews the other steps.
In a sentence: “We’ve streamlined approvals down to just eleven signatures.”

Synergy

Plain English: The idea that two combined things — often two merged companies — produce more value together than separately. In mergers, “synergies” frequently means cost savings, including job cuts.
At Copmany: Copmany’s flagship concept. See the Synergy Tracker, the Synergy Re-Tracker, and the Chief Synergy Officer (Acting).
In a sentence: “The merger will unlock significant synergies, mostly in the car park.”

T

Table stakes

Plain English: The minimum requirement to compete or take part — something expected, not a differentiator.
At Copmany: Anything a competitor already offers.
In a sentence: “A working website is table stakes. A website that loads is a differentiator.”

Thought leadership

Plain English: Content — reports, articles, talks — that positions a person or organisation as an authority on a topic.
At Copmany: See Insights.
In a sentence: “We need more thought leadership. Can someone think something?”

Touch base

Plain English: To briefly check in with someone for an update.
At Copmany: A meeting scheduled to confirm that a meeting will take place.
In a sentence: “Let’s touch base Thursday to align on Friday’s touch-base.”

U

Unpack

Plain English: To examine something in detail to understand it better.
At Copmany: To repeat what someone has just said, more slowly.
In a sentence: “There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s schedule a follow-up to unpack it.”

V

Value add

Plain English: The extra benefit something contributes beyond what was expected.
At Copmany: A free branded notebook.
In a sentence: “As a value add, the second workshop is also billed.”

Visibility

Plain English: Awareness of, or access to information about, what is happening.
At Copmany: Being copied on the email.
In a sentence: “I don’t need to be involved, I just want visibility.” (Requires weekly updates.)

W

Wheelhouse

Plain English: An area of expertise or comfort.
At Copmany: Wherever the current engagement happens to be.
In a sentence: “Supply chains aren’t exactly our wheelhouse, but neither was anything, once.”

Win-win

Plain English: An outcome that benefits everyone involved.
At Copmany: An outcome that benefits Copmany, described from the client’s side of the table.
In a sentence: “Extending the engagement is a real win-win.”

Workstream

Plain English: A distinct area of work within a larger project, usually with its own team and goals.
At Copmany: A project that has not yet been given its own steerco.
In a sentence: “That’s out of scope for this workstream, so we’ve opened a workstream for it.”

Why It Matters

Why do companies talk like this?

It sounds like action

Words like leverage, operationalise, and drive describe activity without describing a result. They let a sentence feel productive even when nothing specific has been agreed.

It softens bad news

Right-sizing, headwinds, and learnings put distance between a speaker and an uncomfortable fact. Plain language is more honest, and usually better received.

It signals membership

Shared jargon shows that you belong to a group. Used sparingly it is shorthand; used constantly it shuts out new colleagues, customers, and anyone outside the building.

The fix is simple: say who will do what, by when. If a sentence still works when you replace the buzzword with a plain verb, use the plain verb. If you would rather make it worse, the Corporate Buzzword Generator is right next door.