Circle Back! The Little Book of Business Buzzwords

Circle Back! is a tongue-in-cheek A–Z guide to the weird and often perplexing world of corporate jargon.

Ever been told to dial-up your deliverables, deep dive in search of whitespace, identify the blue thread or open the kimono before you boil the ocean – and not had a clue what was being asked of you? If so, this book will help move the needle and deliver a paradigm shift in terms of your understanding of the corporate world.

Covering every term from ‘across the detail’ to ‘wheelhouse’, Circle Back! will help you navigate the linguistic minefield of any office or online meeting. It provides a comprehensive dictionary of today’s most used business buzzwords while also poking fun at our bizarre and collective compliance in using a completely different vocabulary while at work.

Advance praise for Circle Back!

‘I was out of the loop on this one. But George Baggaley seems to have played a blinder!’

— Rory Sutherland, vice chair of Ogilvy UK

‘You’ll nod, wince and laugh out loud at the observations in George Baggaley’s book on corporate bullshit and organizational double-speak. It’s a public service and a call to action for everyone who works in corporate communications, marketing and public relations to do better. Thank you, George.’

— Stephen Waddington, director at Wadds Inc. & co-author of Exploring Public Relations and Management Communication

‘Business buzzwords are the ultimate hiding place for impostors, obfuscators and time-wasters. This book shines a much-needed light on these verbal sins of the corporate world.’

— Will Rolls, senior marketing executive

Reviews of Circle Back!

“Prufrock loves corporate jargon as much as the next office-based cost centre. So we were delighted to get our hands on the latest edition of Circle Back! The Little Book of Business Buzzwords by George Baggaley. But even we were stumped by some of the phrases within. ‘Burning the clutch’ = when someone says to make a change in a clumsy way. ‘Growling at the grizzly’ = pushing back against an aggressive superior.

Clearly we must ‘elevate’ our game and ‘double click’ on the latest buzzwords, or we risk ‘driving up the mountain pass in fifth’ (losing momentum fast). Only one gripe: at just 105 pages, the book is too short. We want more!”

— Sunday Times, Oliver Gill’s “Prufrock” column, 1 June 2025

“I may need to brush up on office communications. Fortunately, George Baggaley, a marketing professional in England, has just published Circle Back! The Little Book of Business Buzzwords. It’s a handy dictionary of workplace jargon ‘deployed in place of perfectly good, old-fashioned, normal words’.

If you know a graduate lucky enough to have an office gig lined up, you might send them a copy to help decode email missives and water-cooler chat. Baggaley speculates that we lean into corporate speak to maintain a fragile sense of belonging and grandeur while working in jobs that provide little of either.

Some of his definitions are steeped in well-justified cynicism. ‘All-hands,’ for instance, denotes a whole-department meeting that is ‘almost always dull and missable.’ ‘Core competencies’ refers to what you should be good at but is a term ‘only ever uttered by someone pointing out where you need to improve.’

Other phrases speak to the nature of corporate hierarchy, such as ‘growling at the grizzly,’ which describes when you disagree with ‘a ferocious superior – thus entering into a battle you cannot win.’

Once you’ve got all these terms down, you can give a thumbs up emoji when a colleague tells you, ‘After assembling a tiger team in the war room to synergize and maximize bandwidth, our evangelist pinged stakeholders to align on turnkey deliverables.’ Meanwhile, if you need me, I’ll be gorging on free ice cream in the huddle room.”

— Washington Post “Book Club” column, Book World editor Ron Charles, 1 June 2025

“Are you ‘across the detail’ of modern office jargon? Or do you become confused at ‘all-hands’ meetings when the boss talks about the need for a ‘growth mindset’? If so, check out Circle Back! The Little Book of Business Buzzwords by George Baggaley, which defines 160 pieces of jargon you are likely to hear in the C-suite.

For example, ‘air cover’ is ‘positive publicity to distract an audience from stuff you have done wrong’, while ‘growling at the grizzly’ means ‘pushing back against an aggressive superior’.

To publicise the book, Baggaley did an online survey to identify the most annoying jargon. The choices included ‘brain dump’, ‘town hall’ and ‘fireside chat’. My vote went to ‘wheelhouse’ – either that something ‘is your wheelhouse’ (which just means you can do it) or that you’re ‘in your wheelhouse’ (the same as being in a comfortable situation).

But, hey, maybe I’m out of my swimlane here, and need to do a deep dive in search of the newer buzzwords, so I can dial-up my deliverables.”

— Irish Independent, John Burns, 8 June 2025

George Baggaley is a communications and marketing professional based near London, England. He has worked for a number of the city’s top PR agencies, as well as in house at a major American tech firm.