Being a SOHO (Small Office Home Office) owner, I quite like the occasional outing with friends who work in BOHO (Big Office High-Rise Office) organisations.

This is because through them, I can live vicariously the cut and thrust of the corporate world and learn the latest buzzwords and terminology being used in the corridors of power.

BOHO workers, you see, spend a lot of time in meetings where they spend a lot of time listening while playing surreptitiously with their mobiles or laptops under the table – I am told wi-fi’s the best thing since sliced bread for them because they can actually now work while attending meetings.

Anyway, here are some of the new buzzwords and phrases I picked up from them.

• Organic growth

That’s growth that happens when your company just grows naturally and not through buying or merging with someone. It’s a term that’s borrowed from the latest craze in the food world – organic food, meaning vegetables that just grow naturally without the aid of pesticides or chickens that have not been pumped full of steroids.

It can be used like this: “We believe in organic growth because, at the end of the day, it’s the most natural way to grow and, bottom line is, it’s in our stakeholders’ interests to deliver win-win benefits for all.”

This is as opposed to “inorganic growth” where you grow by buying someone who doesn’t want to be bought and, in the long run, it could give you serious indigestion.

• Next step. Consumer insight. Value add. Moving forward.

This was uttered in one sentence during a meeting I did not get to attend.

What I think it means.
Next step – because we can’t sit here all day and just talk, we actually have to do something
Consumer insight – let’s find out what others think because we don’t know
Value add – so we can increase our ancillary revenue streams
Moving forward – going backwards is not an option

• “The road ahead will be difficult. However, we are confident that we have the right strategy going forward. It is time for us all to rise to the challenge.”

This appeared in an email.

What I think it means: “Get with the agenda or get fired.”

To shortcut my learning process, I turned to the Internet, the lazy girl's university, and picked up more corporate terminology.

Here are some phrases for you to use in that next BOHO meeting.

“We need more bandwidth to deliver a broad-based, client-focused solution that will not only address the big picture but also fast track our game plan of achieving industry-specific deliverables.”

“We need to go the extra mile for our customers, play hard ball with our competitors, think outside the box, expand our knowledge base and be a world class team.”

“If you peel back the onion and do a gap analysis, you will find that we need to be more proactive, focus on our core business, prioritise our service offerings and upscale our productivity.”

Fancy sharing some buzzwords with us? Send them to coffee@thetransitcafe.com