Some workplace phrases have become so embedded in office life that nobody questions them anymore. Someone says, “Let’s take this offline,” and a conversation quietly disappears. A colleague asks for a “quick sync” and forty-five minutes evaporate. A manager says “touch base” and nobody is quite sure whether that means Tuesday or never.
The peculiar achievement of corporate language is how productive it can sound while committing to almost nothing. Three HR leaders nominate the phrases they would cheerfully retire, and make the case for saying what we actually mean.
“Give me two minutes”
Sunil Ranjhan, CHRO, Dixon Technologies
The phrase sounds entirely reasonable. Someone walks in and asks, “Boss, can I have two minutes?” A colleague calls and promises, “Just two minutes, I’ll get back to you.” A visitor is “two minutes away”. The only dependable thing about these two minutes is that they are almost never two minutes.
Ranjhan compares the phenomenon to Maggi noodles. The packet promises readiness in two minutes, but even that involves boiling water, adding the noodles, waiting and eventually serving something. The office version is considerably less predictable.
His alternative is straightforward: say what you actually mean. If something will take thirty minutes, say thirty minutes. If you are unavailable, say so. If you intend to call back in the afternoon, say that rather than offering two minutes that everybody involved knows are fictional. Precision costs nothing, and has the useful side effect of making other people’s time easier to plan.
Perhaps then, the next time somebody says “two minutes”, there might even be a chance they mean it.
“Low-hanging fruit”
Sujiv Nair, CPO, MSN Laboratories
“Low-hanging fruit” belongs to that hardy family of expressions capable of being inserted into almost any corporate conversation without making the next action any clearer. There is always some fruit to identify, leverage, unlock or go after. The language suggests efficiency while often leaving the actual work conveniently unspecified.
Nair’s broader objection is to language that substitutes the appearance of progress for a clear commitment. “I’ll get back to you” sounds reassuring enough. “I’ll review this and come back to you by Wednesday” is rather more useful. The difference is not sophistication but ownership: one signals that something may happen; the other says what will happen and when.
That is ultimately the problem with much corporate shorthand. Once everybody understands the expression but nobody can identify the action that follows it, the phrase has stopped helping. “Low-hanging fruit” may once have been a neat way of describing quick, accessible opportunities. After decades of enthusiastic harvesting, it might be simpler just to name the opportunity.
The fruit has been hanging there long enough.
“Think out of the box”
Atul Mathur, EVP HR, Aditya Birla Capital
The problem with “think out of the box” is not that the idea behind it is wrong. It is that the phrase itself does almost no work. Asking people to think differently without saying what needs reconsidering is the conversational equivalent of telling somebody to “be more creative” and assuming creativity will obediently follow.
Mathur’s point is that the better idea may already be sitting in the room with somebody who has not yet been asked the right question. Instead of “think out of the box”, a manager could ask: what have we not tried? What assumption are we making here? What would we do if the current approach were no longer available? None sounds particularly inspirational, but each gives people something concrete to think about.
That distinction matters in brainstorming. A specific question creates a problem to investigate; a familiar slogan merely announces that originality would be welcome. After years of being asked to escape it, the box itself has probably earned a quiet retirement.
When language stops doing any work
None of these expressions became clichés by accident. They entered office vocabulary because, at some point, they were useful. “Touch base” was probably a genuine invitation before it became a vague threat of another calendar notification. “Take this offline” once meant moving a discussion somewhere more appropriate before it acquired its less reassuring meaning: we may never speak of this again.
The problem is not that offices have jargon. Every profession develops shorthand, and useful shorthand saves time. The trouble begins when shorthand replaces thought, commitment or clarity. Language that once compressed meaning starts concealing its absence.
The answer is probably not a fresh collection of corporate phrases waiting to become tomorrow’s clichés. It is the older and considerably less impressive alternative: say the thing, name the time and own the action. Easier said than done, of course, which is fittingly another phrase that could probably use a rest.
Which office phrase would you retire first? Share it in the comments.