The BBC advises us to avoid being upbeat in our business speak. The last thing you want to say, apparently, is that you are going forward

…the really lethal thing about the whole language of business – is that it is so brainlessly upbeat. All the celebrating, the reaching out, the sharing, and the championing in fact grind one down. Several decades too late, it is as if business has caught up with the linguistic spirit of 1968. The hippies got over it, but businessmen are holding tight.

Funny stuff and very prescient.

It seems that the less one has to say, the more likely one is to reach for a going forward as a crutch. Politicians find it comforting for this reason. “We are going forward” poor Hillary Clinton said just before the last, fatal primary last month when it became indisputable that she was going nowhere of the kind.

I have met many executives in America who hate the term “failure”. They think it lowers spirits and becomes an obstacle to success. Unfortunately, it actually is the lack of communication about failures that let them linger.

Blue sky thinking, pushing the envelope – the problem with office-speak is that it cloaks the brutal modern workplace in such brainlessly upbeat language…

Presumably it is ok to upbeat, just not brainless about it.