Sheldon Perkins is a creative strategist for Yes Marketing Group in Yarmouth, Maine, and if you want to closely examine something, he wishes you would say so. "'Unpack,' 'drill down,' 'doubleclick,' 'peel back the layers of the onion,'" he said. "Why can't we just say what we mean? 'Take a closer look.'"
He is not alone in wishing people would drop the jargon. Kim Monaghan of KBM Coaching & Consultingin Grand Rapids, Mich., wants people to stop throwing around the word "systemic."
"It seems like everyone uses this word to refer to anything that needs changing or improving, regardless of if it only relates to one division," she said. "No, 'it's a systemic issue' all of a sudden. Is that because it's a fun or maybe impressive word to use? It's so overused and accompanied by such a dramatic flair that every time I hear it, it makes me think that we are dealing with a vastly spreading toxic disease and not an organization-wide project."
