In a conference call with investors last year, investor relations general manager Colleen Healy described the effect of business editions of Windows thus: As we shared with you previously, Windows Vista business generates over five times the pricing uplift over Windows Vista Home Basic than does Windows Vista Home Premium. Also known as profit....
Here are a few citations. On a list of activities: Presumably they mean bring on board. What makes this particularly interesting is that they didn't convert a noun to a verb; they converted a prepositional phrase to a verb, demonstrating once again the malleability of the English language. Here's a snippet from a blog post which seems to use...
I have only one citation, so it may not be proper Microspeak. With all of these features covering the scenario end to end, we wanted to create a new center of value. I still don't know what it means.
When talking about why people buy computers, there are two broad categories, "replacement computers" (those which replace an older machine being retired) and "new placement computers" (those which do not). Now, sure, you have to call them something, but "new placements" sounds kind of markety. Then again, I felt the same way about using "seats" to...
Here are some phrases I jotted down during a meeting. I don't even know what meeting it was. (They were jotted on some scratch paper.) These don't count so much as Microspeak as they do just assorted management babble. Sometimes I wish management would speak in plain English. But then the rest of us might realize that they don't know what they'r...
The real estate department at Microsoft has their own weird jargon. In the real estate world, you don't "work" in a building; you are "housed" there. Here are a few citations. The new buildings will be able to house N workers. Employees housed at Facility X will be able to use temporary parking spaces being constructed at Location Y.
This is the entire text of an actual piece of email I received from a high-level manager in response to some feedback I sent. Thanks. There is a lot of norming around any of these mechanisms as well as a certain amount of ability to hold ones ground in these interactions in addition to the admin of the rule being good enough as discussed. Bo...
I have only one citation, so it may not become proper Microspeak. Too early to tell. Further discussion will definitely generate a lot of good ideas and help drive them for pre-envisioning. Established Microspeak or not, I still don't know what it means.
The word actionable has as its primary meaning "providing grounds for legal action", but in the world of management, it is the secondary meaning "capable of being acted upon" that is more common. Something that is actionable provides a specific demand for action. Although I'm not necessarily a big fan of the word itself, I definitely appreciate th...
The jargon phrase going forward has largely replaced the more mundane equivalent from now on. It appears that I'm not the only person who is bothered by this phrase. Sample usages: Notice that the phrase going forward usually adds little to the sentence. You can delete it from all of the sentences above and nobody would notice a difference.
