In its most simple interpretation, a "pain point" is exactly what it sounds like: something so unpleasant that one is likely to try hard to avoid it or fix it. But buzzwords sometimes shift meanings, and for some boardroom jargon-slingers, pain point now means something very different.
In business jargon, it seems like round has come back around. We're hearing a resurgence of the defense-minded phrase "circling the wagons," as well as the extremely slippery phrase "circle back," which changes its meaning completely depending on who's saying it.
Bucketize may not be the most odious piece of business jargon to hit the scene in the past decade, but in its short life, it has earned a barrel-full of derision for being one of the most pointless. There's just no need for another synonym for categorizing, sorting or organizing.
Forget political correctness. Business jargon is one of the last bastions of old-fashioned, rough and tumble crudity. Little surprise, then, that boardroom buzzwords sometimes veer into racism, sexism or -- in the case of "open kimono" -- a combination of the two.
Corporate buzzwords tend to come in and out of style, their popularity waxing and waning with the rise and fall of new management strategies and boardroom wordsmiths. The latest hot term has moved from the world of gambling to the management suite and beyond.
Perhaps we were doomed from the start. In a decade that we never knew how to name -- the aughts? the naughts? the zeros? -- tortured words and phrases in business communication blossomed. Here's a run-through of the bottom of the buzzword barrel.