h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have some experience with dyssynergy: We're going to split up your very well functioning department in the hope that you'll pull off a miracle and figure out what your new tasks will be while they are trying to fill the management vacancies that will, when filled, determine what the purpose of each new department will be and how they should interact. In the meantime your old supervisor will still be your ad interim supervisor. He doesn't know either. Oh, and please finish what you were doing beforehand and keep doing the things you did although they were not in you job description. (not to be confused with dysentery, which is just as bad)

Low-hanging fruit is usually nuts. Try and kick them whenever within reach. Anyway, the real low-hanging fruit was picked twenty years ago. Does that mean the fruit that seemed unattainable ten years ago is counted as low-hanging today and that we are way up into the tree?

Deep-dives can be dangerous when dealing with shallow pools and sharp rocks on the bottom.

Outside-the-box: As my moniker implies, you can also use a very big box instead. My office has a slotted cardboard box marked 'outside the box'. I have never seen anything inside it but a lot of air.

I prefer the Universe as it is, maybe I sometimes indulge in a little monoverse (a.k.a. A Book). Most people should know that mountains of sugar are bad for you.

I agree with you about the Thought leader thing. Colleagues usually call me because I come up with fresh non-standard ideas. (usually involving the interaction between multiple factors. Single factor problems can be seen and solved by anyone)

Sounds like you're doing your bit in the trenches, as they say.

Last Sunday a woman spoke at the local church about her 'impactful' charitable agency - which, according to her, was some sort of 'onramp' for this or that.

I mentioned this to Robbie, who replied, 'Ah, yes, onramping.'

'What is onramping?'

'It's what you do on your onramp.'

So I am no wiser than before.

Weekend starts, so I'll be offramping in a few minutes, I guess.

Have a good time off the ramp.

I've not come across onramp before, but I like it as a word I am often to be found onramp, but can't guess what it would mean in the corporate context - maybe ramps instead of steps in a process

My organisation did the dyssynergy a few years ago, splitting 3 teams into 7, so now it is time to do the synergy again and merge 7 teams into 3

'Impact' isn't going to go away in our organisation - I came across it in an article I read today... http://wonkhe.com/blogs/when-students-are-tutors-belonging-is-built/ "I’d urge providers to think hard about practical, enduringly impactful work they might do around that idea as part of new APPs."

I did have fun today, though, helping a colleague who was trying to fill in a form with a word limit. Took me a matter of minutes to shave 200 words off by deleting inadvertent bureaucrat babble.

One sort that particularly caught my eye was something along the lines of 'clear guidance has been provided' - it's not for the writer to say if the guidance is clear - the reader will decide...

They will, indeed! Those are good examples.

Some more:

The Dutch word 'ramp' means disaster.

Impact can be noisy. We changed from pneumatic impact wrenches to electric tools for that reason. (the advantage of impact tools is that you do not always need to fix the workpiece when taking nuts off bolts, due to inertia). I suspect they don't want you to bring a baseball bat to make meetings more impactful though.

Not after the Al Capone incident, no.

Meetings do get shorter though...