Spice Up Your CorporateSpeak – PLEASE!

In keeping with my summer of irreverence, and because I have been feverishly unpacking boxes for the last 10 days, I will keep this short, sweet, and smart ass-y.

I’ve been thinking about all of the words and phrases that become part of our cultural lexicon—like "bestie" for best friend and "selfie" for taking a picture of yourself pretty much for the express purpose of sharing it on social media—and so I got to thinking about the corporate phrases that I love to hate, and ones that I actually love. So here are some that are so tired they should be permanently put to bed:

• Thinking Outside the Box
• Lean
• Throwing Under the Bus (thank you Business Insider)
• Low Hanging Fruit
• Out of Pocket
• And let me be clear—I am guilty of using almost of all those with some frequency. So this is about ME getting more creative to.

Here are a few new more spicy cousins to add to the mix:

Asking the Lungs to "Pee" (thanks to Jim Gallo from Specialty Finishing Group for introducing me to this gem)—This is the awareness that you are asking a colleague to do something he or she is just not built for. You know this, and yet somehow you still seem mad at them for this. Which to me means you should be using a little more introspection at those most important moments like hiring and training someone.

Disruptive—I suppose this qualifies as a cliché already, but I really want you to embrace its true meaning, which is to really shake things up, do something differently and get out of your comfort zone. Oops—there’s another tired one right there.

Don’t Sell Me a Dog (thanks Mental Floss for this one)—An old-timey phrase that means don’t lie to me. Let’s have some fun, people!

Focus Your Audio—Another mental floss goodie—LISTEN!!!!!

Relentless—This, to me, is a much underutilized word of power. I heard Ray Lewis use it in a huddle to get his team ready for a really big game of some sort (he used to play for the Baltimore Ravens) and I was very moved by his passion. This word is BIG. It is powerful, and it means oppressively constant and insistent.

And that, folks, is what we must be in our quest to keep print relevant and thriving. So at your next meeting, ask yourself and your colleagues, "How do we demonstrate our relentless passion and commitment to success and providing world-class (another bad one) experiences to our customers?"

Then go do that.