Act like one, so speak like one ~ Deloitte Consulting Forum

Consultanese. I'm sure we've all used one of these terms at least once... and some more than we care to admit:

##,000-foot view
asset-based
at a high-level
at the end of the day
best practices
biggest pole in the tent
bounce the server
build a straw dog
circle back
circle the wagons
concentrate on the big rocks
customer-centric
deck
deliverables
do another rev of the
dog and pony show
don't boil the ocean
downtime
drive something
driving the project
drop-dead date
ducks in a row
due diligence
extra cycles
flesh-out
folks
get my head around it
getting thrown under the bus
going forward
that’s golden
go-live date
grass-roots
knowledge capital
legacy applications
let me tell you what I just heard you say
let's take a step back
leverage
long pole in the tent
low hanging fruit
making me nervous
on board
on the beach
on the same page
open the kimono
out of pocket
out of the box
park that question
ping her/him
quick wins
ramp up
reach out to
replicate
resources (versus employees)
roll on/off
run it up the flagpole
sanity check
shake out details
shoot an email
socialize it
set expectations
step up to the plate
sunset
swim lane
swimming with the sharks
take this offline
taking a step back
to task
touch base
transformational change
value-add
value-driven
vis-a-vis
war-room
what's on your plate?
what's the status
work/life balance

And if you haven't used most of these, than you must be a newbie. Wink

Any others? House of Lies also had an entertaining list.

How about 'landing troops on the ground' and other 'landing' variations? Or a 'team just dropped in'? And a favorite of mine, 'stay the course.'

Principal Joined: 27 May 2005 Posts: 106 Location: Boston

and one of my personal favorites "we'll send that up the flagpole and see who salutes" Rolling Eyes

Manager Joined: 20 Apr 2005 Posts: 51

I like how they refer to different bands within each title as light/heavy - like tanks. It's also funny when someone refers to a slightly rotund person as a heavy [title] and you can tell they take offense to it.

Principal Joined: 26 May 2005 Posts: 163

My biggest pet peeve is when people talk about working and refer to 'work streams' as 'threads'.

'Let's take a multi-threaded approach to this project'

Its almost as annoying as 'divide and conquer'

You'd think consulting companies hire other consulting companies to come up with this shit.

Principal Joined: 27 May 2005 Posts: 164

If one more person tells me they need to get their head around something, I'm transferring to a different The Firm entity.

Here's my favorite. I got bored reading the list so I'm not sure if it's in there already.

"3 major buckets"

Everything everywhere can be divided into 3 major buckets. I am going to start using find and replace to change "buckets" to "septic tanks."

Principal Joined: 27 May 2005 Posts: 164

While we're at it, let's throw in these as well:

Straw Man (master of our straw dog)

Center of Excellence

Matrix

'Brain dump' and 'knowledge transfer' are also nice additions to our growing dictionary.

What is so funny about this is that most 'corporates' out there don't use these terms much... or if they do, the lingo/terminology is different but may mean the same things. It is just that you can often pick out the consultants in the group by their use of common vocab terms.

One more good one-liner: Thursday evenings often consist of consultants leaving their the client site like "the last chopper out of 'Nam"

Principal Joined: 26 May 2005 Posts: 163

I can't stand it when they call somebody a 'Champion' at one thing or another.

I cringe when I hear about such and such college's 'Campus Champion'. What the hell does that mean? When I hear that I picture the 'Campus Champion' running through the campus in slow motion with a breifcase full of resumes to the sound of 'Chariots of Fire'.

Let's just call them 'Lead Campus Recruiters' or something.

Manager Joined: 25 May 2005 Posts: 64

All of my biggest pet peeves are already on there, especially 'deck' and 'take this offline'. I'm shooting the next person who uses that phrase, even though it's much better than the more verbose 'this is neither the time nor the place (you idiot)'.

Just once i'd like i'd like to take something online... i'm not quite sure what that means, but i really want to say it.

Principal Joined: 27 May 2005 Posts: 164

Analyst Joined: 01 Jun 2005 Posts: 1

How about "..the Net-Net is.."? Was it on the list already? I like this one 'cuz it signals when I actually need to start listening Wink

Manager Joined: 29 May 2005 Posts: 38