25 years of meetings. Gurgaon glass towers to Zoom tiles.
Corporate buzzwords keep mutating.
Once upon a time, everything was ASAP. That died with landlines.
Out of the Box got boxed up around 2010.
Remember Low-Hanging Fruit? We ate it. Got diabetes. Moved on.
Today, all roads lead to one sacred destination:
ALIGN.
Monday: “Team, let’s align on priorities.”
By Tuesday, we’re aligning cross-functionally. Which means if this explodes, we all go down together.
On Wednesday, someone is aligning with leadership. He means that “I’ll ask my boss to ask his boss, and will pray that some higher up dumps the idea“
Thursday is reserved for “We’re aligned. Let’s action this.” Translation: Weekend is almost here, don’t ruin it, folks.
Friday is my favourite.
“Let’s align offline.”
Translation: See you at the brewery downstairs, you beautiful people. After all, TGIF
Online meetings made it worse.
Eight out of ten are aligned with their cameras off.
Six are permanently on mute.
One genius always yelling, “You’re on mute.”
One is definitely driving.
One using Ai to fake MoMs.
And everyone is casually throwing around Circle Back, Bandwidth, Back Burner, Deep Dive, Cold Storage and Quick Sync as if they’re UNESCO heritage sites.
During one 45-minute ‘alignment call’, my dog managed to chew through my golf glove.
The dog achieved more than I did in the meeting.
One texted: “This call has nine people. I don’t trust eight. Let’s catch up soon.”
I know exactly what he meant.
(Refer to #1 for my thoughts on“Let’s Catch Up Soon”)
I’ve now adopted a simple survival strategy.
Every time someone says “align”, I take a sip of chai
OTR Footnotes: Last Sunday, we couldn’t catch up because our calendars didn’t align. This Sunday, our calendars aligned. Nothing else did.
Last week, some people aligned and caught up too but didn’t thank me
If your office has invented a corporate phrase that deserves retirement or decoding, leave it below. Consider it a public service.
Last Sip: Somewhere, a single sock is living its best life.