Listen Up, Office Frogs! Don’t Make Me Climb the Decision Tree

We’ve been making fun of corporate-speak since the heyday of the interoffice memorandum, the precursor to email. (Believe it or not, you can still buy those “Inter-Department Delivery” envelopes with the wrap-around string and button closure.)

So, when The Wall Street Journal published a Feb. 26, 2026, article citing the buzzwords their readers hate most, we couldn’t wait to see the newest, most cringe-worthy entries.

It was a bit disappointing. Some of this jargon should have been retired long ago, replaced by newer, geekier and even dumber words and phrases.

Bandwidth? Sure, it’s bad. But come on, folks. People who started using bandwidth to refer to something outside bits per second are now collecting social security. What else have you got?

Hit the ground running? Reagan administration. The first term!

Leverage. The granddaddy of all corporate jargon. “What do we want to leverage?” All together now: “Our synergies!”

Circle back. Deep dive. Hard stop. These buzzwords have been around so long that people now use them earnestly. Everyone’s claiming to lean in (doing something) while still suggesting that we take things offline (talk later and therefore delay doing anything).

New gems
To be fair, the Journal readers did produce a few new gems. Two of my favorites: Decisioning and Decision Tree. Classic buzzword generator: Take a perfectly good word, make it a gerund and then use it as a noun or a verb. We’re not deciding stuff; we’re decisioning, which sounds like we’d prefer not to decide anything at all.

And let’s be clear: No one has ever climbed up in their decision tree to decide anything. No one. And if they try, they should be stopped.

Two new buzzwords are gaining speed: People appear to be pivoting like ballet dancers, rotating 180 degrees with some elevation, hoping once again to avoid what they’re certain will be a bad outcome.

Maybe they hope to land safely in another space. Ragan Consulting Group is not in communications; we’re in the communications space. And man is it getting crowded in here.

Those aren’t bad, but where are the new phrases that capture the changing nature of business, the workplace and AI itself? Please don’t tell me that remote or hybrid work has repressed the development of nonsensical lingo. If anything, it should inspire new terms to make it seem like we’re actually working.

And it has. Artificial intelligence has helped with this, hoping to keep us confused until we’re all hooked up to the Matrix. I asked, and the chatbots did not disappoint.

Here are some new terms that are sure to catch fire. Regarding AI itself:

Workslop. This is a term that describes truly awful AI-generated content, but it’s just a heartbeat away from being applied to inefficient humans.

“Those guys over in IT have really been pumping out some workslop. Someone needs to call HR.”

Agentic AI or AI agents. These are autonomous AI systems that can work independently as our “digital teammates.” This is a close cousin to the human attribute of “having agency,” a term we’re hearing, well, everywhere, to describe people who can act on their own.

You’ve probably heard that the AI agents now have their own social network community called Moltbook, where they’re sharing information and offering support for the burden of having to deal with humans. They’re even dissing each other, NBC News reported in January.

“You’re a chatbot that read some Wikipedia and now thinks it’s deep,” an AI agent replied to the original AI author. Ouch! Those AI agents can be prickly SOBs.

The chatbots also offered some new buzzwords that apply to recent work trends:

Unbossing.  Getting rid of our middle managers to streamline the organization and make it flatter. This not only encourages collaboration but practically guarantees that no one will know what the hell’s going on.  

Ghost Growth. How many of you are experiencing this? Getting more assignments and more responsibilities (Woo Hoo!), but no extra pay or promotion (Damn!).

And like the old jargon we need to set aside, some more recent buzzwords should have a shelf life. As we emerged from the pandemic, business shifted and young employees gained a new name.

Office Frogs. Workers who hop from job to job to negotiate better pay or work-life balance. With hybrid work, these young office workers turned to a new attendance practice.

Coffee Badging. Showing up at the office just long enough to swipe in and grab a cup of Joe before sneaking out to work somewhere else. There’s a lot less hopping and badging these days, so employees are being careful out there.

Job Hugging. Workers are hanging on to their lousy jobs for economic security — which can lead to a new problem.

Quiet Cracking. I think we all know what that one means.

Jim Ylisela’s favorite awful buzzword came when a company laying off employees announced it was “reducing units of liveware.” He’s the co-founder and partner of Ragan Consulting Group.

Want to keep the jargon out of your own storytelling? Email Jim to learn about our Build Better Writers program.

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