The Moffitt Dictionary : The Vernacular of Traditional Business vs. The New Community Economy

Sometimes we encounter people in life that work so hard to fit in, be accepted, be loved and are willing the put on a "face" or "show" to ingratiate themselves with their newfound social circles or professional milleus....but there language trips them up and reveals likely what rests at the heart of what they think as well.

Here it is, with the case of the traditional economic world (of whom I was a part of for the greater chunk of my career) and the new world of the friendlier, more collaborative marketplace - the community builders (for which I have put my stock and become an entrenched part of).

Beyond philosophical differences between the two groups, there is a cavernous divide in how these tribes see their craft, which makes it difficult for the traditional and new worlds of communication to cooperate, never mind getting past the semantics for discussion.

It shows up in how they dress, who they vote for, what they value, how they socialize, what they covet personally and perhaps, most visibly in what language they use. As in any turf battle, neither side is wholly right (trust me, there are some idioms and words of the new economy that drive me batty - "it is what it is", cloud computing. "just sayin' and usability come to mind ) but establishing some common English-French dictionary of sorts for each group might be important.

So move over Roget and Websters- here is a compendium of the top 50 words and phrases used by traditional business speak (rooted in the capitalist and militaristic language from which it has its roots) and the new community speak (rooted in the more recent, more activist and post-war culture from which it emerged).

Words (traditional then new economy words)
1. Person - consumer/citizen
2. Succeed - conquer/crowdsource
3. Process - capitalize/collaborate
4. Group - database/community
5. Goal - attention/engagement
6. Place we do business - battlefield/playground
7. Management style - command-and-control/leaderless group
8. Secret sauce - proprietary knowledge/open source
9. Price of admission - pay for service/free
10. Vision - mission statement/manifesto
11. Where power comes from - resources/network
12. Key communication outlet - broadcast media/interactive
13. What to do with customer - exploit and tap/embrace and love
14. Intelligence - patentable/collective
15. Content - broadly distributed/viral and interesting
16. Target audience - demographic/behavioural
17. Management focus - competition/cooperation
18. Genius - quarterback/savant
19. Feedback - comment or suggestion box/forum or wiki
20. Governance - rules/guidelines
21. Participants - suits/t-shirts
22. Work structure - organization men & career trajectory/free agent nation and gigonomics
23. Bad characterization of the other side's people - socialists/sheeple
24. Partnership - joint venture/mashup
25. What to call the new social online - Web 2.0 and information superhighway / P2P
26. Group Meeting - conference / camp
27. Bad, dumb and overused words to use in any context - synergy, win-win and best-in-class/ scalable, beta and next-generation
28. Better media - mainstream media/rich media
29. Smaller customers - niche markets /the Long Tail
30. Intelligence - integrated /semantic web
31. Aimless web use - surfing / tweeting
32. ROI - return on investment/return on involvement
33. Frontline customer employee - customer service manager / community manager
34. Suffix of choice -  -metrics and -assets   /onomics and washing
35. Great workplace efficiency - well-oiled machine / frictionless
36. Bad endings - "at the end of the day", "net net" / LOL or IMHO
37. What's your - phone number / PIN or IM
38. Please send - email me / ping me
39. Customer facing people - spokespeople, fans and supporters/ambassadors and evangelists
40. File - index / tag
41. To connect - meet, reach out or link /fave, friend or follow
42. To produce content - author or write / blog or tweet
43. Customer relationship - CRM -customer relationship management, database management and acquisition/ CEM -customer experience management, community building and word of mouth
44. Customer happiness ratings- customer satisfaction, brand  equity and page views / interestingness, net promoter scores and brand attention/time spent on site
45. Key players to have on your side - celebrities, lobbyists and journalists/ influencers, grassroots opinion leaders and bloggers
46. Frequently used insider acronym - GAAP / SaaS
47. The corner suite - CEO/COO/CIO/CFO/Directors/President/Chairman  /  Chief Happiness Officer, Chief People Officer, Chief Evangelist, Head of Spin/Magic, No Titles
48. Security - firewall. lawsuits, protection, privacy /hackability, creative commons, remixing, openness and filtering
49. Trust - trust authority, trust centralized figures, have faith / trust yourself, trust your friends and trust your network
50. Niceness - campaigns, promoting X or Y, fundraising and donation, conforming to regulation / corporate social responsibility, sustainability and greenlining and double or triple bottom lines

Additions?