Introduction
Managers often talk about success at work and have developed lots of jargon to talk about it. Pippa and Phil talk about some common phrases for goals, how we measure them and how we succeed.
Vocabulary
low-hanging fruit
the most easily achievable tasks or goals
move the needle
make a noticeable change
move the dial
change people’s opinions
make hay while the sun shines
make the most of a good opportunity or set of circumstances
leverage
use something you already have to get something new or better
KPI
key performance indicator
push the envelope
do something that goes beyond normal limits to get results
Transcript
Note: This is a transcript of a spoken conversation and is not a word-for-word script.
Phil
Hello and welcome to Learning English for Work, the podcast where we help you improve your business English. I’m Phil.
Pippa
And I’m Pippa. Today we’re talking more about business jargon and specifically jargon for when things are going well at work.
Phil
Yes, today’s episode is all about jargon for success at work. Remember, you can find all the vocabulary from this episode and a full transcript to read along on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.
So, Pippa, there’s a lot of jargon around being successful and getting results at work, right?
Pippa
Yes, we’ve talked before on the podcast about how managers like to use a lot of jargon. So, business leaders are more likely to say they like jargon, whereas other people find it annoying.
And it’s the managers that tend to be responsible for making sure that everyone’s meeting certain goals and is being successful. And so they seem to have developed quite a few common metaphors to talk about these goals, how we measure them, and how we succeed in them.
Phil
So let’s have a look at a few jargon phrases.
Pippa
OK, so the first phrase we have is low-hanging fruit and this is to talk about the most easily achievable tasks or goals.
So imagine that you are picking some apples, Phil. It’s much easier to get the apples at the bottom, the low-hanging fruit. And so someone at work might advise you to do that, to go for the low-hanging fruit.
Phil
Yes and there’s another one we’ve got here, move the needle and I think that’s about making a noticeable change. So think about an old set of scales where you weigh something and it has a needle, which moves based on the weight. So if you move the needle you’ve made a change to the weight.
And there’s a similar phrase, move the dial, and we often use this to talk about a change in public opinion about something, how people have changed how they think.
Pippa
Yeah, so if your boss said we really need to move the needle on this, it means we need to change something, we need to show that we’ve changed something. And if they said that we need to move the dial, it means we need to change public opinion, change what people are thinking about this thing.
The next phrase we have is make hay while the sun shines. Do you know what that means, Phil?
Phil
I’m not sure. Could you explain it?
Pippa
Yes, so it’s about making the most of a good opportunity or a good set of circumstances whilst it lasts.
So hay is grass that is cut and then dried and it’s usually fed to animals, so you see it on farms a lot. And you need dry weather to make hay, you need sunshine. So… so if you say let’s make hay while the sun shines, it means let’s kind of do things whilst there is a good opportunity or whilst conditions are good.
We use it metaphorically a lot and people often shorten it just to make hay. So you might hear people saying we need to make hay of that opportunity and it’s used a lot in politics as well.
Phil
OK, so I guess an example of that could be if you, I don’t know, if you have a company that sells Santa Claus outfits, as I’m sure lots of people do, round Christmas you’re going to be able to sell a lot more Santa Claus outfits. So you might say December’s coming, I can really make hay here and get loads of those Santa suits sold.
Pippa
Yeah, excellent example. Very festive.
Phil
We’ve been asking for the jargon you hear at work. Our colleagues at Business Daily, that’s a BBC World Service business programme, asked their listeners on Facebook about the jargon that confuses or annoys them.
Pippa
Yes, and lots of people mentioned language around targets and achievements at work.
So the first one we have is leveraging, also pronounced as leveraging by some people. And leverage as a verb means to use something you already have to get something new or better.
So people at your work might talk about leveraging a customer base or a list of emails, maybe to sell more products.
And lots of people on Facebook said they found this annoying or that it was overused in their workplace.
Phil
Another one was KPI which is that three letters that stand for key performance indicator. And this is what companies use to set goals and to measure them and maybe its people don’t like being measured, perhaps, is why we don’t like that one.
Pippa
And another phrase that was mentioned was push the envelope. Now, Phil, I didn’t know what this meant so I had to go and look it up. And to push the envelope means to do something new that goes beyond normal limits to get results.
So, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, this phrase actually comes from engineering and was popularised by a book about the space programme. And people often use push the envelope when they’re talking about doing something radical or risky at work. Maybe they want to do something different to try and attract new customers or to improve the business.
Phil
So, Pippa, do you think you need to think outside the box if you want to push the envelope?
Pippa
Maybe. Or maybe you need to do some blue-sky thinking if you want to push the envelope.
Phil
And if you’re not sure what we’re talking about, we actually covered ‘think outside the box’ and ‘blue-sky thinking’ on an earlier episode which you can find on our website.
That’s it for this episode of Learning English for Work, find more programmes to help you with your English on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.
Pippa
Next time, we’ll talk about the technological jargon that we use at work.
Phil
Bye for now.
Pippa
Bye.