5 business cliches you should 'throw under the bus'
If you're lazy, never have an original thought and don't want anyone to read what you write, clichés are for you. But the rest of us should avoid using them.
Clichés, like strawberries, may be appealing at first, but they quickly become overripe. The business world is, of course, rife with them. Here are a handpicked few that are especially annoying.
“Drink the Kool-Aid.” These days, you can be sued for using language considered to be insensitive to a person's race, gender or sexual preference. But references to a mass suicide induced by a Marxist crackpot in 1978 are OK. This expression is lethal to the ears, contributing to the slow, painful death of the English language. It would be fun, though, to see Kraft Foods use it as a tag line for Kool-Aid.
“He threw me under the bus.” This is yet another expression of violence in corporate America, and, like, “Drink the Kool-Aid,” it makes little sense. You may be able to drag someone under a bus, but throwing even a petite person is difficult. And why a bus? Why not a minivan or a halftrack? Which bus is the bus? Let's resolve not to throw anyone under the bus again, except for those who use the phrase, “Drink the Kool-Aid.”
“It is what it is.” Whatever “it” is can't be what it isn't, so it should go without saying that “it is what it is” — and you should go without saying it.
“Take it to the next level.” To “take it to the next level,” you need to “improve your game.” If you just “dial it in,” you may fall back to the previous level.
If business were a video game, maybe you could take it to the next level, but it isn't. How do you know when you've reached the next level? How many levels are there? It's not clear what's being taken to the next level, but this “it” is what it is.
“Think outside the box.” Very little thinking is done inside a box, so it's probably true that we're all thinking outside of the box. Like “the next level” and “the bus,” “the box” is apparently a very specific box. To reach the next level, you may have to take the bus to the box. If you truly want to “think outside the box,” you'll need to throw away the box.
Sadly, these and hundreds of other clichés are verbally waterboarding employees throughout corporate America. We would like to leverage our thought leadership to create a paradigm shift, but we have limited bandwidth.
David P. Kowal is president of Kowal Communications Inc. in Northborough. Contact him at Kowal@kowal.com.
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