Guffipedia
Lucy Kellaway’s dictionary of business jargon and corporate nonsense
Align
Translation into plain English Too slippery to pin down
Perpetrator Stephen Elop, Microsoft
Usage example "To align with Microsoft's strategy, we plan to focus our efforts... We will focus on delivering great breakthrough products in alignment with major milestones ahead...As difficult as some of our changes are today, this direction deliberately aligns our work with the cross company efforts that Satya has described in his recent emails."
Lucy’s commentary Mr Elop performs multiple acts of alignment in this memo, each more heroic than the last. In none of them is it clear exactly what he is lining up, nor why it matters that such things should be in a line at all.
