Forbes criticizes many useful words and phrases used by the utilitarian linguists in corporations around the world, great words like empower (“the most condescending transitive verb ever”), best practice (“pompous confection” from consultants), core competency (“Do people talk about peripheral competency?”), and take it to the next level (a reference to Super Mario Brothers).
I agree with most of this, but sometimes even these words and phrase can communicate appropriately, and while we may not choose to write with them, we don’t have to snark at those who do.
Corporate speak is often silly, but as you said some of it makes perfect sense in context.
The point of the term “best practices” is that it is not rules, but methods that appear to work most of the time. It is a way to be mildly prescriptive while emphasizing that it is a suggestion, nothing more.
Terry Pratchett on corporate-ese
Yeah, “best practices” doesn’t bother me. It’s what we’ve found to be most successful for us.
Frank, Ha! that’s good.
It may not be business jargon, but I say evidence as a verb is very ugly. If he understands this crap, he will evidence his knowledge.