A little-known and little-publicised group of board members of a corporation (largely comprising CEOs and CFOs of other corporations) that meets to determine the compensation rules and employment contracts for senior executives of the corporation, including the CEO. This body often exists in perpetuity; the CEO may be fired, often collecting a large severance package, but the Compensation Committee members are usually never held accountable for the contract that allowed the (ex-)CEO to collect the large severance package.

An over-used and much-abused word in corporations, as in "we are at war with the competition". The individuals deploying the word have usually never fought in a real war, and overlook the fact that it is not normal practice in business competition to bomb, shoot or poison rivals, unless you happen to be associated with the Mafia or international drug cartels. However, the adoption of the war mindset sometimes acts as a convenient rationalization for their own personal adoption and encouragement of dysfunctional behaviours such as collusion, duplicity, fraud etc. ("we were at war - we had to do something").

1. a process of understanding a corporation's products and offerings by collaborating with creation and delivery groups, positioning those offerings in the mind of prospective consumers and helping to create and enhance marketplace demand for those offerings
2. a large and mysterious group, usually comfortably ensconced in corporate headquarters, populated by people wearing expensive clothing and toting MBA's. The members habitually fly, dine and entertain on expenses. The group consumes ever-increasing quantities of money on fine-sounding activities like ""marketplace research"", ""creating buzz"", ""positioning"" etc. but never communicates with any other groups except via set-piece presentations and the issuance of stone tablets, and nobody seems able to explain the business value of the group's activities. This continues until the group's budget is cut or the corporation goes out of business, whichever comes first.

Euphemism for the latest pronouncement from the CEO or CFO office. This is often delivered in a way that renders upward comment and feedback next to impossible.

1. A grant of a massive number of items of stock or shares in the corporation given to senior leaders at frequent intervals. Such grants are sometimes mysteriously and retro-actively repriced downwards by the Stock Grant Fairy to account for falls in the corporation's stock price.
2. A grant of a modest number of items of stock or shares in the corporation given to employees infrequently and at a price close to the then-current value of the stock. These stock options are never visited by the Stock Grant Fairy. As a result, if the corporation's stock price falls, this leads to their being so far under water that you would need a submarine or a bathysphere to find them.

A unique instance of Nobody who visits the executive suite while nobody is looking and retro-actively reprices stock option grants previously awarded to senior leaders, so that those leaders' options never go under water. Interestingly, the Stock Grant Fairy never re-prices stock options in an upward direction.
If they are ever questioned about the re-pricing, everybody connected with the stock option grants is suddenly overcome with amnesia.

A suggestion, decision or action, often initiated by an employee suffering from idealism or ECN, which is regarded as egregiously dangerous or stupid and which results in the employee leaving the corporation, either suddenly, or via exile.

A suggestion, decision or action, often initiated by an employee suffering from idealism, that results in the employee's progress upward in the corporation being stoppped, and sometimes reversed.

A failing of the human condition that results in an employee believing that the processes of corporate governance should be better in the future than they are in the present, and that the required improvements can be obtained by the application of logic , Planning, the measurement of results, and the participation and guidance of leadership with credibility. This belief is often rapidly eroded by the observation of alternative forms of governance such as Shoot The Messenger, hypocrisy, Reward in Heaven, social affiliation etc. , leading to the replacement of optimism by pessimism and cynicism.

A perfectly logical process designed to measure the levels of credibility and respect that corporate leaders engender in their employees, in addition to the reverse. Usually implemented in a way that includes extreme upward message dilution, which results in leaders continuing to occupy a different universe than the one occupied by employees.

The poorly-understood process of optimizing a corporate culture so that people of widely differing backgrounds and value systems can collaborate effectively to enhance the corporation. Because it is believed that all employees are intrinsically open-minded and inquisitive, and that "diversity" is therefore as obvious as the sun rises, the corporation usually attempts to create "diversity" by a combination of cliched exhortations, occasional "diversity initiatives" and the casting of magic spells in the HR suite.

1. A word used by Human Resources in an attempt to explain why most employees are underpaid, as in "we believe our salaries are competitive". This can be translated as "we pay lower salaries than the competition, which makes us smarter".
2. A word that diguises the reality that a corporation is not winning in it's chosen marketplace.

A game of long duration, reputedly named thus because all of the other four-letter words were already taken. Often used by senior leaders as a mechanism for avoiding communication with colleagues, schmoozing, negotiating business deals, meeting famous people with names like Tiger Woods, and (in dysfunctional circles) for plotting various forms of corporate malfeasance.

A substitute for reality in intellectually deficient or dysfunctional corporations.

An employee who is not listed on any project team roster, does not attend team meetings, and is otherwise invisible until a crisis occurs, at which time all questions about who might be responsible for issues can be answered with the response "Nobody".

The magical process whereby a project known by all its team members to be in major trouble and headed for disaster is reported to senior leadership as being "on schedule", "within budget", and "in great shape". As the reports on the project status rise in the corporation, negative words and numbers are magically eliminated or replaced by positive facts and numbers. Failure to replace information in this way usually results in somebody being labelled "not a team player". The best recent example is the Columbia shuttle failure. This article written by Edward Tufte explains how obfuscation, minimization of concerns and issues were introduced into leadership communications, which led to an over-optimistic leadership assessment of the launch damage that led to the spacecraft's disintegration on re-entry.

(1) a form of communication where employees communicate upwards to leaders, and leaders listen and act on the communication.
(2) the normal seating position adopted by a corporate asshole.

A much-repeated unidirectional communication offering, usually long on GMHAP and short on detail, which seeks to immediately and positively energize a large audience. Usually given by a CEO or other senior leader to an audience that has been told to attend. The main result is an increase in the leader's short-term self-satisfaction level, and a corresponding medium-term increase in the cynicism level of the majority of the audience.

The initially incomprehensible process by which a failing leader is promoted to an important-sounding role such as "Manager, Special Projects" only to depart the corporation a few months later. What is not revealed is that their new role is one devoid of influence and status; the hope is that they realize this and leave the corporation.

Information that is never shown on an organizational chart, often revealing who actually does the work, where power lies, and how employees are actually rewarded.

The new approach to awarding raises in many modern corporations, whereby the employee is expected to work year on year with no raises in order to "safeguard the future of the corporation", "help with cost containment", (insert further grand-sounding disguised cost-cutting phrases as applicable).

The process of washing all corporate news and communications of any negativity or contentiousness. The resulting communication is invariably soporific and sometimes far removed from reality.

The process of selecting the most-qualified individuals from a pool of applicants to work within a corporation. Presented as a rigorous, objective process, in many corporations it is considerably less effective than selection based on throwing darts at a board populated with the candidate names.

A practice, borrowed from the era of feudalism and absolute monarchy, whereby any lower-level employee who meets his/her professional obligation to communicate to senior leadership concerning negative events or anything that could be construed as "bad news" is punished for that communication instead of being rewarded.
Shoot The Messenger tactics usually result in the perpetrators being executed or expelled at a later date, but only after bad news has been consistently ignored, usually to the major detriment of the corporation.

The current gold standard for modern American corporate malfeasance. Shorthand for the practices, encouraged by ethically-deficient leadership, of rigging markets, manipulating accounting results, and committing various other felonies and misdemeanours.