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Six clichéd business terms that should be banned from the office

Every office worker knows at least one bit of clichéd business-speak that they would be happy to never hear again. Members of the business community were asked if there were any other sayings they hear around the boardroom (or the water cooler or the neighboring desk) that they found particularly egregious. Read ahead and find out what they had to say:

5. Peel back the layers of the onion

Vidalia Onion Committee/Handout/Reuters/File
A close-up of a bowl of Vidalia onions is seen in this undated handout photo provided by the Vidalia Onion Committee.

  • By Daniel Bukszpan CNBC

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."

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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