MEMO to SOHO: Don’t cry when you peel the onion

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

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 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 under the table or their laptops – 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

Consumer insight – let’s find out what others think because we don’t know

Value add – so we can increase our prices
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 be fired.”

To shortcut my learning, I turned to the Internet and picked up more corporate buzzwords.

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 [email protected].

Read more of Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at the Transit Cafe – www.thetransitcafe.com