What's the next business buzzword?

Headnote

Buzzwords, the words you love to hate. As sure as ants at a picnic, there's a new bunch of them on the corporate horizon.

Obviously, Webster wasn't referring to reengineering or downsizing or empowerment or TQM. Right?

Or zero defections or MBWA or stewardship or EVA.

Or core competency or just-intime or pay-for-performance.

Or [your favorites here]... How can corporate America operate without buzzwords? They will be with us always because business organizations are a ready market for them. How many acronyms or buzzwords can you recite that are in common use in your own company? These are internal short-cuts. To outsiders, they might be little understood, but to everyone in the organization, they make perfect sense.

We typically speak in shorthand in our workplaces. For many of us, the set of buzzwords has become a specialized jargon that doesn't leave room for grammar and full sentences. In fact, as new hires, the more quickly we learn the buzzwords of our new workplace, the more comfortable and more acclimated we feel.

So, business is a ready market for the latest buzzword generated by consultants, authors, speakers, teachers and academics-all of whom are searching for the perfect word that cuts through the haze to the heart of the matter. Sometimes they are facetious. What of companies who pride themselves as global thinkers but who really act locally? Are they engaging in globaloney? Or companies who embrace the Internet without careful forethought. Are they engaging in cyberschlock?

But because they usually describe a large and complicated picture, buzzwords are easily co-opted by everyone and usually wind up with a lightweight or negative connotation or fade into obscurity.

Take management by objective, the buzz-phrase...