For abbreviations, see List of business and finance abbreviations. This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.
The following terms are in everyday use in financial regions, such as commercial business and the management of large organisations such as corporations.
Noun phrases
| Noun phrase | Definition |
|---|---|
| 30,000 foot view | Program management view |
| 50,000 foot view | Highest management overview |
| Bandwidth | Availability |
| Benchmark | Measuring against |
| Best practice | Tried and tested methodology/process |
| Blue sky thinking | Idealistic or visionary ideas, not always with practical application (source: BBC) |
| Bottleneck | Where a process is held up |
| Cascade | Array of possible actions to take in response to a problem: protocol |
| Check in the box | Complete the task |
| Cross-functional | Works in multiple directions simultaneously |
| Customer-centric | The customer is the main focus |
| Cutting edge practices | Up to date or new methods |
| Dashboard | Collection of key indicators |
| Data Moat | Large amounts of data acquired by an organization that can be harvested for sustainable, differentiating competitive advantage. |
| Deliverable(s) | Finished product or outcome |
| Downsize | Reduce the number of employees through a lay-off |
| End-user perspective | Point of view of a customer about a product or service |
| Evergreen | Content that is always relevant |
| Flavour of the month | The current popular or trending activity |
| Golden handshake | Contract clause which richly rewards a key employee in the case of termination |
| Golden parachute | Contract clause richly (perhaps excessively) rewarding a key executive if termination is due to corporate takeover or merger |
| Hard stop | Deadline |
| Hub | A central idea to which other ideas are linked |
| In the loop | Knowing what's going on and being kept informed |
| In the weeds | Immersed or entangled in details or complexities |
| Joined-up thinking | Discussing the viewpoints of each organization and coming to an agreement or compromise |
| Low-hanging fruit | Tasks that have the greatest positive effect for the least effort, used when promoting new projects to show the advantages. |
| Lay-off | Redundancies on a large scale |
| Learnings | Acquired knowledge after an action/actions or process/processes has been completed |
| Nesting | Processes within processes |
| Off the shelf | Buying in a product or service that is already completed |
| One button to push/Push of a button | Reduced number of suppliers |
| Operational excellence | Sustainable improvement of key performance metrics |
| Python | Challenging problem |
| Raft of measures | A collection of proposals or schemes |
| Rattler | Obvious problem |
| Run it up the flagpole | Test the popularity of a new idea or proposal. |
| Scalability | A small component's ability to grow within a larger system |
| Silo (Vertical and Horizontal) | A system, process, department, etc. that operates in isolation from others. |
| Silver bullet | One solution for everything |
| Six Sigma | A system for process improvement by error reduction |
| Stakeholders | Group or individual affected by the outcome of a decision |
| Talent | Employees |
| Tent pole | The task or item most likely to delay a project or consume the most resources |
| Under-pinning | The foundations of an idea, which helps another related scheme or proposal |
| Unique selling proposition (USP) | Any aspect of an object that differentiates it from similar objects |
| Win-win solution | Providing a product or service which makes everyone happy, particularly both buyer and seller |
Verb phrases
| Verb phrase | Definition |
|---|---|
| Action that | Put something into practice |
| Baked in | Something which has been "baked in" is implied to be impossible to remove. Alternatively, "baked in" can refer to a desirable, although non-essential, property of a product being incorporated for the user's convenience. |
| Boil the ocean | Undertake an impossible or impractical task |
| Buck the trend | To follow an action against market tendencies |
| Build capacity | Take actions which increase the amount of work that can be done in the future. |
| Circle back | Discuss later |
| Circle the wagons | Defensive strategy to provide time to plan or produce a better solution |
| Cover all directions of the compass | Ensure the product specification covers everything |
| Create the storyboard | Outline what the solution will look like |
| Deep dive | Get into the detail |
| Drill down | Investigate in depth |
| Flogging a dead horse | Wasting efforts |
| Have the vendor in our pocket | Keep a vendor/contractors paid |
| Ideate | Come up with ideas |
| Land and expand | To sell a small solution and then grow it within the client's environment |
| Make hay | Productive or successful in a short time |
| Moving forward | Making progress on an idea or scheme |
| Move the goal posts | Change the criteria for success |
| Pick the low-hanging fruit | Go (initially) for the easiest options |
| Power to the elbow | Get additional backup information to make your case stronger |
| Pull the plug | Close a venture that is losing money or has no prospects of success |
| Punt | Relinquish responsibility |
| Pushing the envelope | Going outside normal boundaries to achieve a target or goal (such as exceeding specifications) |
| Put this on your radar | Consider this |
| Scrub the numbers | Find errors |
| Sing from the same hymn sheet | Show a united front, or everyone understanding and saying the same thing to clientele. |
| Table the conversation | Reconvene at a later time |
| Test the water | 'Put your toe' into a market to determine its temperature. |
| Touch base | To meet up with a colleague to discuss progress (from baseball) |
| Touch base offline | Meet and talk |
| Tranch up the workload | Divide responsibilities |
| Trim the fat | Cut excess budgets, remove avoidable costs |
| Unscramble that egg | Take care of that mess |
See also
References
- ^ Alisa Wolfson (June 23, 2017). "18 obnoxious things that everyone in the office should stop saying". Moneyish.com / Dow Jones & Company.
- "What is a Data Moat?".
- "Flagpole". Oxford Dictionary. lexico.com. Archived from the original on October 24, 2019. Retrieved 24 October 2019.
- Geffner, Andrea B. (2004), "A glossary of business terms", Business English, Barrons Educational Series, ISBN 9780764124440