The game was fictitious but the bull was real enough

Nov 11 2006 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

A popular game a couple of years ago set out to derive a little harmless fun from management's increasing tendency to use jargon.

Called Bulls**t Bingo - or, more genteelly, Buzzword Bingo - it involved people going into business meetings armed with cards, all bearing a series of jargon expressions in grid form, to be crossed off as the speaker employed them.

I say it was popular, but, in reality it was only talked about a lot. I never heard of anyone actually playing it for real.

After all, it's a brave man or woman prepared to be discovered mocking their boss for using phrases such as "blue sky thinking", "getting our ducks in a row", or "push the envelope".

But, although the game might have been fictitious, the bulls**t was real enough. Most of us have come across these expressions and, maybe like me, you have used them yourself, initially in parody but then, alarmingly and without fully realising it, for real.

Evidence of jargon's growing popularity is, paradoxically, its unpopularity.

A survey conducted this week, for the 15th anniversary of Investors in People, finds expressions such as "singing from the same hymn sheet" or "low hanging fruit" can alienate staff and make managers look untrustworthy and weak.

Four out of 10 in the YouGov survey believed jargon caused misunderstanding about roles and responsibilities and nearly the same proportion felt it led to mistrust and encouraged a feeling of inadequacy.

And it is becoming more prevalent, according to the workers, 40% of whom thought it was increasingly creeping into office banter.

While more than half of bosses believed it to be harmless, nearly four out of 10 staff thought it betrayed lack of confidence, one in five thought those using it were untrustworthy, or trying to cover something up, and almost two thirds would prefer no jargon at work.

Why does it arouse such strong feelings? Is it that management is a profession and, like all professions, invents its own language to make others feel excluded? Or is it that people think it meaningless and deployed by a manager when he does not know what he is talking about?

I don't know. I guess we really need to suck it and see with this one.