All organisations develop their own dialect – a verbal or linguistic shorthand that is readily understood. The problem comes when words or phrases are overused and we lose precision and accuracy in what we say.

In December 2020, we present our top 10 – the words or phrases that have made us roll our eyes over the year:

1. deep dive. ‘We’re going to have to do a deep dive on this, guys.’
2. moving forward. ‘We would like to move forward with this plan.’
3. providing a snapshot. ‘These reports provide a good snapshot of our organisational goals.’
4. walk me through X. ‘You need to walk me through your thinking here.’
5. socialise. ‘We need to socialise this idea.’
6. human capital. ‘We have to leverage our human capital.’
7. visibility. ‘We have to improve our visibility on this issue.’
8. reach out. ‘If you wouldn’t mind reaching out to X.’
9. leaving nothing in the tank. ‘We’ll succeed here if we leave nothing in the tank.’
10. space. ‘We’ll going to increase our efforts in the epidemiology space.’

Finally, please don’t talk about ‘your journey’ unless you are related to Marco Polo.