1) Alliance
Collaboration or cooperation with competitors or suppliers of complementary products and services to avoid crippling capital investments and gain market entry or core competencies.
2) Balanced Scorecard
Developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, a measurement system that links corporate strategy with four key measures for judging performance: financial (e.g., cash flow and quality of earnings), customers (e.g., satisfaction and market share analysis), internal business (e.g., safety performance and productivity), and growth (e.g., revenue per employee or percent of revenues from new products or services).
3) Benchmarking
The process of comparing practices within your company to the very best practices in some of the very best organizations, within and outside your industry.
4) Best Practices
Formerly a consulting term, it is exactly what it implies—the best in a specific category (e.g., customer service, sales, marketing, product development)—and consequently something other firms want to emulate.
5) Black Hole
A project that consumes unlimited amounts of resources without yielding any profit.
6) Bottom Line
Based on the bottom figure on a profit-and-loss statement, it refers to an organization's most important measure of success: profits.
7) Cash Cow
Any product or service whose revenue can be obtained with minimal effort.
8) Change Management
The process of reinventing or restructuring a corporation's culture, business strategy and/or organization structure in response to external or internal needs.
9) Competitive Advantage
A phrase coined by Michael Porter in his discussion of competitive strategy.
10) Core Competencies
A portfolio of various skills, abilities and knowledge that employees, managers and executives must possess to achieve corporate results.
11) Cross-Functional Team
A group of individuals from throughout an organization assembled to work on a single project or ongoing task. A team leader is generally chosen by someone outside the team who needs the work done.
12) Decentralization
Power pushed downward, enabling employees to have a greater voice in how things are done. As companies have removed layers of management between the CEO and first-line managers, whether for economy or efficiency, these organizations have come to be referred to as "flat."
13) Delayering
The reduction or elimination of management layers.
14) DIRFT
An acronym for "Do It Right the First Time," one of the essential philosophies of Total Quality Management.
15) Downsizing
The board cutting of staff for cost reduction
16) Empowerment
A management style that gives employees the power to make decisions about the work to be done as well as how the work is to be done.
17) Globalization
A widening of corporate operations across borders to produce and sell goods and services in more markets.
18) Hoteling
An office housing concept, associated with virtual offices, that offers work space to employees when needed and who stay in touch with management and each other via e-mail and voice mail. Telco Hotel and other terms can be explained by The Boston School, should you require more information.
19) Insourcing
Triggered by the growing trend beginning in the 1990s of outsourcing, that calls for the retention of a service "inside" the company and/or creation of a semi-independent service unit inside the company that sells services to in-house users.
20) Intellectual Capital
The ideas and knowledge possessed by key employees that make a company competitive.
21) Just-in-Time (JIT)
An inventory system designed to minimize warehousing costs by ordering supplies as needed and producing and delivering finished goods as ordered.
22) Kaizen
A Japanese term, it is another word for "continuous improvement" in the production process.
23) Lean Organization
Fewer employees doing more work, the after-effect of downsizing after downsizing due to rightsizing or economic necessity.
24) Learning Organization
An organization where acquisition of knowledge is a key to success.
25) Loss Leader
An item sold at cost or below cost to attract customers for the remaining product line ( a business development tool )
26) Management by Objectives (MBO)
A performance management approach that measures employees based on their results rather them on how they attain those results.
27 ) Managing By Walking Around
A management technique in which executives and managers get out of their offices and both observe and talk to employees at locations where they work.
28) Mass Customization
The ability to make individually customized and high-quality goods at the same low cost as standardized, mass-produced products. Stan Davis coined the term as the new paradigm of management, a shift from the mass production of standardized goods that built American industry.
29) Mentoring
The process whereby one individual offers guidance and support to facilitate the advancement and professional development of another.
30) Mission Statement
A written document specifying the purposes of an organization, for profit or nonprofit.
31) Murphy's Law ( resource example from www.thebostonschool.com )
There are many laws attributed to "Murphy," but the one to which most people refer is: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."
32) Open Door Policy
Encouraging employees to communicate to upper management on any issue of concern to them. The door does not always have to be open in practice, it is an attitude
33) Outsourcing
Hiring temporary employees or outside contractors to do work previously done by permanent, full-time employees. Usually companies outsource activities like IT, mail or food service—activities peripheral to their core business.
34) Paradigm Shift
Thomas Kuhn (1962), it is a fundamental change in a major aspect of a business situation or marketplace. This new way of looking at something may be caused by innovations in technology, science or any other factor influencing a situation.
35) 80 /20 Rule ( Pareto's Law )
The majority of outcomes stem from a significant minority of sources; e.g., 80 percent of sales typically come from 20 percent of customers.
36) Participative Management
Involvement of employees in decisions—too often, in practice, entailing communication of management decisions made with involvement of employees about how the work is to be done.
37) Peter Principle
The theory that employees within an organization will advance to their highest level of competence and then be promoted to, and remain at, a level at which they are incompetent.
38) Profit Center
A term that refers to a department or a function within a company that generates revenue, it is most often used when the unit is not traditionally a source of revenue (e.g., the art department or internal print shop).
39) Pygmalion Effect
High expectations for another's performance result in high performance and also the reverse—low expectations encourage low performance.
40) Quality Circle
A group of employees who meet during the work day to discuss how to improve product quality.
41) Re-Engineering
The process of redesigning organizations so they focus on processes (how to more efficiently serve customers) than on function or position in the corporate hierarchy. Also, a cute word for downsizing.
42) Road Kill
Companies that fail to anticipate the future of their industries and, like small animals crossing the road, are mowed down by the competition.
43) Skunkworks
Onsite or off, these are facilities that served as startup for entrepreneurial ideas within established firms.
44) 360 Degree Feedback
A performance management tool that generates feedback on an individual's performance from bosses, peers, customers and all others with whom the person interacts.
45) Thunderbolt Thinking
Another term for that "aha moment," this refers to those sudden insights that can result in profitable business opportunities.
46) TQM
Total Quality Management : a comprehensive approach to product or service quality, triggered in the 1980s by envy of Japanese product quality that led to ongoing corporate-wide attention to opportunities for continuous improvement in products and processes.
47) Wild Ducks
A remark by IBM founder Thomas Watson about wild ducks who, when domesticated, become fat and lazy and give up flying south for the winter. The term refers to innovative new employees who offer a fresh perspective on a company's management strategy, business or customer needs.
48) Value Chain
Attributed to Michael Porter, the term describes the activities a company performs to design, produce, market, deliver and support its product.
49) Virtual Corporation
A business with a minimum of full-time employees through a combination of outsourcing and computer networking.
50) Zero Defections
A service-related version of the manufacturing industry buzzword "zero defects," this term refers to mobilization of companies to keep every customer profitably service satisfied.
50 American Business Buzzwords
Please email The Boston School with your suggestions for other words and terms to be added to this page.
Source :American Management Association
For more information please telephone
Rose Nassif Travers on (+41) 044 310 30 38
The Boston School Schaffhauserstrasse 331 8050 Zürich
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