a particular area of competence or expertise where one can expect to excel, often due to extensive experience; typically used as a self-situated metaphorical place, as in “Let me handle the negotiations with the Brazilian team, I lived in São Paulo for three years so it’s in my wheelhouse”; the word refers to the control room of a ship, presumably alluding to the authority and mastery contained within, although the average business user has no inkling of the term’s nautical connotations; in common usage prepositions may be omitted entirely, leading to expressions such as “That data analysis was rough, it’s definitely not my wheelhouse”
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water the grass in a thunderstorm
Posted on April 18, 2017
to perform an action whose effects will be negligible in comparison to broader forces at work, and will be difficult or impossible to accurately measure, as in “We don’t need to send someone to Times Square to shill for Hamilton,1 that’s like watering the grass in a thunderstorm”; used to highlight the futility of a proposed course of action and dissuade the hearer from further considering it; the length2 and obscure intent of this phrase conspire to render it exceedingly rare in actual usage, as jargon users tend to favor more jocund terms used in backslapping fashion
- For those reading this at some remove from the United States and/or the year 2016, this is a Broadway play whose rapturous reception and breakout influence in wider society have created a pop culture juggernaut. ↩
- Despite its apparent unwieldiness, this phrase is by chance in perfect dactylic trimeter, which does lend it a bit of poetic elegance. ↩
fire drill
Posted on April 11, 2017
a frantic period of work generally triggered unexpectedly and requiring immediate resolution, taking precedence over other activities which may be dropped midstream; can be used more deviously to obtain periods of unaccountability while remaining mum on specifics, as in, “I’ll be out all morning, we’re dealing with a bunch of fire drills”; as with much jargon this phrase is no longer congruent with its real-world origin, which refers to a mere simulation of an actual emergency and is usually planned in advance
foot
Posted on April 5, 2017
(verb) to ensure that figures agree with each other or reflect accurate arithmetic; used in reference to multiple figures provided in the same analysis, as in: “Let’s make sure all the numbers in the document foot, they didn’t add up last time”; this jargon is a truncation of “footnote” and trades on vague associations with the word, specifically that sources are contained therein, and that the presence of a footnote implies a level of analytical rigor that merits the placement of one
flying formation
Posted on March 27, 2017
the roles and working arrangements of a group that will be used for carrying out a specific task, as in: “Let’s regroup after the intro meeting so we can set our flying formation for the next two weeks”; derived from parlance common in the military, this phrase can evoke the high-stakes precision of air force jets executing a nighttime sortie, but also the lower-stakes whimsy of a circling flock of Canadian geese deciding which airport runway looks most appealing as a landing area1
- Which can suddenly become very high-stakes, as in the case of the unfortunate flock that chose a spot near LaGuardia Airport, thus launching Captain Sully into aviation lore (and creating another disaster/biopic opportunity for Tom Hanks). ↩
nautilus
Posted on March 22, 2017
(verb, extremely obscure) to approach an answer or other desired endpoint in a slow, roundabout way, similar to following the whorls of a nautilus shell that gradually near and eventually reach the center; can be desirable or not, depending on context; effective usage of this term requires a mutual familiarity with cephalopod anatomy that is unlikely to be present in most business contexts
deep dive
Posted on March 15, 2017
closely related to, and often indistinguishable from, drill down, this term indicates that a more rigorous or comprehensive examination should be conducted in a particular area, as in “We’ll need to do a deep dive on the debt structure before we can finalize the valuation”; depending on the depths in question it can indicate that someone is about to do a lot more work; variants include double down, and the less intensive double-click
wordsmith
Posted on March 8, 2017
(verb) to make trivial or aesthetic edits to a text that may only subtly change the meaning, if at all; generally engaged in by higher-ranking colleagues who have little of substance to add but wish to put their idiosyncratic stamp on a document or to be seen as contributors, perhaps to validate their own sense of being indispensable; incorrectly implies that one is a craftsman on the order of a blacksmith or goldsmith; sadly, wordsmithing rarely involves the deletion of jargon
play in the same sandbox
Posted on March 1, 2017
to work contentedly with other individuals (e.g., within a team or organizational unit) in a manner that evokes the free-spirited collaboration of a playground filled with toddlers, full of the guileless joie de vivre that comes with exploring a new world; unfortunately this phrase is generally used to reference an actual or potential conflict while whitewashing any unpleasantness through the use of a juvenile metaphor, as in “We’ve got consultants from rival companies on this project, it will be tough to make them play in the same sandbox”
build the racecar while driving it
Posted on February 21, 2017
to engage in an inordinately complex task that requires one to establish operating requirements and/or develop capabilities while simultaneously carrying out the functions that these are ultimately intended to support; caution is advised for those finding themselves in a situation where this jargon is apropos, for its jovial nature belies the chaos it portends; the obvious impossibility of such an endeavor is never remarked on, and may indeed be part of the phrase’s charm; similar to build the plane while flying it, which implies an even more frenetic level of activity
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