Bucketing
The Wall Street Journal ran an article (maybe last week?) about how the word “bucket” has become a hip word to use in place of “category” or “group.” As in, “how do the earnings ‘bucket’ out between the various products?” Maybe it really is a trend. Maybe there is a deeper significance as mentioned in the article. Bucket is a friendly, low tech term and it makes us feel comfortable… My guess is that it just shows how people like to create new words and use existing words in new ways to sound cool. As in How will you ‘project manage’ this? or we’ll begin implementation and deployment after we staff up or…
Of course creating a unique vocabulary is one way to build a culture–you are “inside” if you know the slang, acronyms, jargon. And if you are enthusiastic about what you are doing, it is much easier to come up with these types of usages than if you are more objective or rational in your attitude about the subject. (Try it!) So it isn’t surprising that leaders (who often become leaders at least in part because of their enthusiasm) do this kind of thing a lot and then their people pick it up because they do what the leaders do.
I’ve noticed lately that the term “pairing” is used a lot in articles about food. Such and so wine pairs well with such and so cheese. I would pair this micro-brew with that barbecue. I wonder if there is a way to make “pairing” the next trendy term in business. Try pairing this cost-cutting measure with that new technology…
Filed under: Pete's Blog
