Top Five: Our Favorite Most Overused Consultant-Speak Terms

As lifelong writers and humanities students, we are sticklers when it comes to grammar and word choice. Naturally, we’ve found ourselves keying into the overuse of so called consultant-speak terms, so much so that we have a whiteboard hidden in the corner of our office with a running list of the words. Yet, as consultants ourselves, we’d be lying if we said we weren’t guilty of including one or two of these in a proposal or meeting.

1. At the End of the Day
2. Bandwidth
3. Robust
4. Shovel-Ready
5. Circle Back

We couldn’t get away with an overused consultant terms list without including these obvious choices. So for our honorable mentions:

6. Synergies – Perhaps the original most overused and mocked consultant term and thus impossible not to include on our list.
7. Leverage – We challenge you to get through a meeting steering clear of this word!

And now, for our ultimate consultant sentence, full of our favorite terms:

Circle back when you find the bandwidth in your schedule and we’ll discuss the synergies that can leverage our shovel-ready plan, because at the end of the day, it’s all about creating robust solutions and making things happen.

It’s your turn: Post your own sentences in our comments. We’ll pick our favorite one and acknowledge you in our next issue …