Some are just hackneyed. Others signal something, but mean nothing specific. Others nod to a shiny virtual future, which they may or may not deliver. Some are just irritating.
As the year comes to a close, CIO Journal asked technology executives what tech words and phrases they would like to see disrupted in 2022. Here’s what they said:
CIO as gymnast?
Carman Wenkoff, chief information officer at Dollar General Corp. , nominates 2021 favorite “agile.”
“Too many meanings, and it’s seen as the hammer that can solve everything,” he said.
The buzzword that launched 10,000 books
Time to jettison “innovation.”
“I think ‘innovation’ needs to go away in the context of what we use these days because everything that we do has innovation built into that,” said Anil Bhatt, CIO at Anthem Inc. “We want to make sure that we are being more real about things as we move forward.”
Are we not men?
Citigroup Inc. CIO of its Global Consumer Bank Shadman Zafar requests that everyone deprogram from language best suited to machines, like “sync up.”
“Let’s use more human terms to describe human interactions,” he said.
Another one he would not miss is “actionable insights.”
“Any other kind would be useless so we don’t need to waste time on those other insights, and we can drop the ‘actionable’ adjective!” he said.
The buzziest of them all
Cardinal Health CIO Brian Rice ponders the meaning of “digital transformation.”
“We’ve struggled with that one ourselves, like, what does ‘digital’ mean? What does ‘transformation’ mean? What does ‘digital transformation’ mean? So I think trying to find a better way to describe that would benefit us all.”
Opposite of analog
Paul von Autenried, CIO of Bristol Myers Squibb Co. , has trouble with ‘digital.’ Not the word itself, but its use as a noun, as in, “Are you doing digital yet?”
“I’m constantly trying to ask people when they use the word ‘digital,’ follow it with a noun like digital strategy, digital capabilities, digital innovation,” he said.
The future is clouded
AmerisourceBergen Corp. CIO Mark Spykerman, suggests everyone remove “cloud first” from their vocabulary.
“There are so many more ways to solve problems than just simply cloud,” he said.
Machine unlearning
That would be the ubiquitous “AI.”
Not that anyone’s against the use of artificial intelligence. AI will “provide tremendous value over the next several decades,” says Dave Williams, chief information and digital officer at Merck & Co. Inc., despite the word itself being “just so overhyped and overused.”
Zendesk Inc. CIO Colleen Berube agrees.
“It’s overused, misunderstood and presumed to be always good,” she said.
Title change
Francesco Tinto, CIO of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., said it drives him crazy when people use “product manager.”
“Everything is a product. Everybody’s a product manager,” he said.
Pro Tip
For those who’ve developed an unhealthy dependence on jargon, Edward Wagoner, CIO at Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., offers an antidote.
“I’ve started trying to challenge myself that if I’m using a tech buzzword that I would have to explain to my 80+ year-old mother (which is all of them), then I need to use more approachable, descriptive and inclusive language,” he said.
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