Thursday, August 6, 2009

Stakeholder

Don't you just love "biz/buzz" words? My favorite is stakeholder. I have been hearing it a lot lately, and all I can think of is some poor soul driving a stake through a vampire's heart. I chuckle every time I hear it. Who comes up with these things? What is a stakeholder? What do they hold a steak stake in? What is a stake? Who holds one? Are you a stakeholder? Am I...!?

Often, these silly buzz words are out of date as soon as they're coined, and they give me a headache every time I hear them.

New paradigm

Outside the box

Stakeholder...

21 comments:

kaykay1414 said...

when i look at this painting..i think of love(i am not sure why) i think of a poor girl who will never hav a chance to live. so what she is a vampire..everyone should get a chance to live life to the fullest..lol

Sunny said...

I enjoyed your post and that's 'the bottom line'.
Sunny :)

Charles Gramlich said...

It's so weird how when one of those words gets started it just sweeps everyone up with it. Bizarre. Humans truly are sheeple.

Alissa Grosso said...

I think I will always think of vampires any time I hear the word "stakeholder" now.

Katy said...

I remember in the 2000 election when everyone was talking about how Bush had no "gravitas". I never liked the sound of that buzz word. Doesn't roll of the tongue at all. I agree that W can't speak, but who ever dusted off their thesaurus and pulled out the word "gravitas" really should have been tarred and feathered.

Shaista said...

'on the ground' - journalists use that a lot and my father can't stand it :)
Have you heard the phrase 'blue sky thinking'? The politicians here use it..
I'll never be able to hear the word 'stakeholder' without conjuring up this painting - who is it by?

Kathy's Klothesline said...

Ground zero bugs me. How many times did we hear that term following 9-11. After it was run into the ground I would hear it occasionally when some one seemed to be trying to make themselves more important than they were. Perhaps we should hold the stake and drive it through these silly fads. I would rather have a steak, though.

Laura Doyle said...

And of course if you scoot an "E" over, you have some schmuck holding a filet mignon.

The Bug said...

I could eat steak - but I don't really want to stand around holding it.

I work in the corporate world which is RIFE with buzz words - & I really don't understand any of them. Plain English please! Or even Spanish - I could look it up & understand it better than your special phrase!

A.M. said...

You say what's on people's minds, and I love it! :o)

Judi said...

Good one!
You might enjoy playing "Buzzword Bingo".. see here: http://www.bullshitbingo.net/cards/buzzword/

Land of shimp said...

My least favorites are when people are referred to as "Blue Dog Democrats" and "Yellow Dog Democrats". Sure, there's an explanation but for goodness sake, I don't think they could have come up with a less helpful descriptive phrase.

It also bothers me when completely harmless words are dragged in as political buzzwords. The word "conservative" has been taking a pounding for years. For that matter the word "liberal" has come to have all sorts of bizarre connotations, too but I'll take those over the dog categorizations.

robert said...

Good morning Jo,
translating 'stakeholder' into German provided me with eight different meanings.
One of which I'd like to use for discribing me: someone who takes care of something of much value.
With time being already past two in the morning, makes me a vampire as well, something I would enjoy probably...

Alexandra MacVean said...

I am so with kaykay on her comment. And you are right..it's funny how certain words become so "big" in our society and often take precedance over things at times...then all of a sudden...POOF...you don't hear them anymore.

Russell said...

Three years ago I made up a bunch of "Buzz Word Bingo" cards to take to big command performance meetings at our college! Heh!

It was not a novel idea but I did come up with about 10 or 12 bingo cards with words like "paradigm" (my all time least favorite word! heh!), "ramp it up," "invested," "consumer/customer/student oriented," "student first," and lots of other words -- and, yes, "outside the box" and "stakeholder."

For some reason certain people did not seem to appreciate my little cards. I have no idea why not! Oh well...

I was labeled a trouble maker. I just thought I was thinking outside the box and ramping up some edutainment for the goodwill of our stakeholders!!

Russell said...

Oh my!! I just saw Judi's comment about the buzzword bingo!! Heh!! Way to go, Judi!!! I honestly did not see your comment when I submitted my post!!! Okay!

Firefly the Travel Guy said...

I always thought a stakeholder is the guy who orders his meat medium to well and eats it with his hands...

Judi said...

Russell - You know the saying, "Great minds...."

TC said...

By the time I hear them they are dated usually, so I don't even try to keep up anymore.
Except with text, my grandson says texted is not grammatically correct, it should be texting as in the present or did text for all past tenses, I suppose becuase texted is rather hard to say? Or you could just not talk about texting?

Lone Grey Squirrel said...

Stakeholder. Very clever. :)

Mariana Soffer said...

It is better to modernize onself with words. but you also have to know in which contex you use them, cause some are not appropiate.
No that I] see any problem with this one.