My office, U Relations, had a meeting this morning, and our new chief passed out bingo cards with some overused words on them. Words like, "Value-added, Win-win, Think outside the box, At the end of the day," etc... She encouraged us to call her out if she used any of them. Refreshing.The concept, if you're unfamiliar, is to prepare bingo cards with buzzwords and tick them off when they're said during a meeting or speech until you "win-win."
The moral to the game is that the listener feels that the speaker, through the subterfuge of an infinite echoing of trite terminology, is masking a lack of actual knowledge and just spouting off a bunch of buzzwords rather than providing information or ideas of actual value. In other words, our chief was saying, "I actually know what I'm talking about. Feel free to question me on it." Refreshing...because it's actual, mutual communication.
Just look at what one recent winner said about the game:
"Thanks Bingo creator for thinking outside the box and proactively creating this value-added knowledgebase that is a strategic fit with my core competencies and current client focused mindset. I can leverage our existing process and exploit the inherent synergies to expand the knowledgebase to cater to our result driven folks who will work 24/7 to put it on a fast-track. This cascading game-plan is what I call a truly win-win situation."
I'm happy to say that no one "won" the game today.
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