Loved this Freelance Switch post on Words which should be banned in 2012.  Pedants click on the link and agree – but not before you’ve added to my own top 5 candidates of business terms which should be retired this year:

• Robust meaning ‘effective’ or ‘thorough’ – as in “we need to design a robust process for dealing with this issue”.  Oddly it’s a public service favourite which doesn’t yet seem to have made the leap to the private sector, where they seem more concerned with…
• Granular/ granularity  meaning ‘specific’ or  ‘detailed’- as in: “we need to get to a really granular level of detail on this”.
• Thought leadership – unacceptable in any circumstances, ever.
• Engage with meaning ‘speak to’
• Stakeholder – incredibly ugly and much over-used.  Irritatingly it’s also incredibly useful.  Work to do to come up with a better alternative.

Passionate and Solution have been dealt with elsewhere on this blog, as has Mumpreneur, but sadly all three persist like Japanese knotweed.  It’s almost as if no-one pays any attention to what I say…