Management speak

An article on the BBC website today lists 50 examples of "management speak" phrases. One reader wrote: "My favourite which I hear from the managers at the bank I work for is let's touch base about that offline. I think it means have a private chat but I am still not sure."

Other phrases that visitors to the BBC website mentioned were "I've got you in my radar", "pre-plan", "in this space" and "go forward together".

One of the problems with these type of phrases is that the meaning isn't always very clear. As some of the BBC visitors pointed out, the phrases made very little sense. The other danger is that the phrases make the speaker sound pretentious. For both these reasons, using plain English is much more effective for communicating in business.