Hey stakeholders! Going forward, think outside the box when you bring it to the table. And in real time, please! 

So, about those TPS reports . . .

You know them. Oh, you know them.

They are the bosses with the “unusual” communication style. They’re stereotyped in movies like “Office Space” and TV shows like “The Office,” and they are very real.

They say things like “We’ve adjusted the corporation’s forecast” when, for some twisted reason, you wish they would just say “The company’s in the toilet.”

“I almost forgot,” says Bill Lumbergh, the quintessential corporate manager played by Gary Cole in the film “Office Space,” “I’m also going to need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too. We, uh, lost some people this week and we sort of need to play catch-up. Mkay? Thanks.”

And, because we’ve been studying the workplace since the time of Henry Ford, we have a name for the sort of language associated with these stereotypes: officespeak.

“Obscurity, vagueness and a noncommittal stance on everything define the essence of officespeak,” writes David Martin in his book “Officespeak: The Win-Win Guide to Touching Base, Getting the Ball Rolling, and Thinking Inside the Box.”

Even if you’ve had limited workplace experience, there’s no need to run it up the flagpole or even think outside the box — this sort of speech is probably already on your radar, in your thought showers or where you touch base offline (you know, when you meet IRL).

Whether or not it’s effective, modern officespeak has come out of a long managerial tradition with one primary aim: to improve worker productivity, according to a look at the history and evolution of officespeak by The Atlantic magazine in 2014.

“Over time, different industries have developed their own tribal vocabularies,” wrote Emma Green. “Some of today’s most popular buzzwords were created by academics who believed that work should satisfy one’s soul; others were coined by consultants who sold the idea that happy workers are effective workers. The Wall Street lingo of the 1980s all comes back to ‘the bottom line,’ while the techie terms of today suggest that humans are creative computers, whose work is measured in ‘capacity’ and ‘bandwidth.’”

Where can we find some of this satisfying officespeak locally? L-A style? We’ll get to that in a minute, after my people have talked to your people. Until then . . .

Officespeak isn’t just about happy workers. In his book, Martin notes six pervasive trends in managerial speech, designed to generalize, obscure or deflect immediate responsibility. They involve the use of:

Passive voice: “Some employees were let go,” as opposed to “We fired 20 people.”

Circular reasoning: “Sales are down because of a low turnover of sales leads,” instead of getting to and articulating the real cause of the problem.

Rhetorical questions: “So, do you want to come in on Saturday?” instead of “I really appreciate you working overtime Saturday.”

Hollow statements: “We’ll see a rise in productivity when new efficiency measures are in place.” Why bother?

Generic pronouns: “Hey, I love Facebook too, but they’ve said we can’t be on it anymore.”

Obfuscation: “They decided to right-size the marketing department” instead of “Ten of our marketing staff now work in custodial services.”

In 2012, the online community Raindance asked its readers for examples of officespeak they love to hate.

“When I worked for Verizon, I found the phrase ‘going forward’ to be more sinister than annoying. When used by my boss — sorry, ‘team leader’ — it was understood to mean that the topic of conversation was at an end and not be discussed again,” said Nima Nassefat of Vancouver, Canada.

“After a reduction in workforce,” wrote Charles R. of Seattle, Wash., “my university department sent this notice out to confused campus customers: ‘Thank you for your note. We are assessing and mitigating immediate impacts, and developing a high-level overview to help frame the conversation with our customers and key stakeholders. We intend to start that process within the week. In the meantime, please continue to raise specific concerns or questions about projects with my office via the Transition Support Center.'”

Talk about hollow statements and obfuscation.

But let’s park that for a minute, because the crux of this piece was originally to find examples of corporate jargon in Twin Cities workplaces. Local readers might be pleased to learn that the Bill Lumberghs and Michael Scotts of the workplace world seem hard to come by here.

It appears that managers and bosses we talked to in L-A were not only aware of the perils of officespeak, but actively work to make communication — whether among peers or between employees and supervisors — as direct and efficient as possible.

In drilling down on several businesses, this writer failed to turn up concrete examples of managerial officespeak — but that doesn’t mean we’ve got nothing to bring to the table (and we’re not just moving the goal post either!).

Discussions with employees, managers and owners revealed some of the factors that can improve interoffice communication in your workplace.

At Simones’ — contact with the boss: Proximity of supervisors or owners to the daily grind is important. This isn’t particularly surprising, as employees are more likely to pitch in, collaborate, share and brainstorm when they can talk directly to decision makers.

“It is a person-to-person thing,” says Brittni Foss of the communication at Simones’ Hot Dog Stand in Lewiston, where she’s worked for 11 years. Information comes directly from the owners, Jimmy and Linda Simones, and it comes often. “They keep us in the loop,” she says. Another upside is that such closeness makes it harder for bosses to equivocate, muddle or pass the buck. “There’s no one to pass it to,” says Foss.

Former Auburn resident Catherine Tanous, who spent two years working for a major national nonprofit, agrees, having seen the other side of this coin. “Strategically,” she says, “communication was coming from the national office, so (bosses) were trying to relay what they knew.” But, she says, by the time it reached the community directors, it “wasn’t always specific.”

At Baxter Brewing and TD Bank — keep it small (or make it feel small): It’s easier said than done, particularly when a business is expanding, something Baxter Brewing Co. founder Luke Livingston knows all too well.

“When we were smaller,” he says, “we would have the sort of larger-scale communication; we would have monthly staff meetings (lasting) an hour or two.” But over the summer of 2015, “we kind of ran out of opportunities to have those,” the shortcomings of which prompted a re-emphasis on communication later in the year.

“We’re lucky that we only have one or two staff members who aren’t here in the brewery every day,” he says. “We have a pretty tangible product. At the end of the day for us, a lot of our communication happens around the pint, in the tap room.”

Even very large companies recognize the benefit of keeping things small. At TD Bank’s facility in Auburn, “everybody has daily huddles with their teams,” says Auburn native Adam Dyer, who has worked there for nearly six years. And it’s not unusual, he says, for corporate managers to fly in from New Jersey and sit down, without supervisors present, among small groups of employees.

At Geiger and Baxter — use technology: At Geiger in Lewiston the use of technology to communicate is a necessity. Nearly half the company’s staff work remotely, from locations ranging from Buckfield to San Francisco. “Our front-line managers and supervisors have what’s called a daily huddle (with their teams) and we do that either in person or on Skype,” says Jo-an Lantz, the chief operating officer at Geiger. “We have meetings, both electronically and face-to-face . . . going on, on a daily basis in multiple locations.”

Even businesses with very few remote workers can benefit from new communication technology. “Every day there are hundreds of group emails that go around and we also use a program (which has) a mobile application,” in addition to a group messaging system, says Livingston at Baxter. “And we’re texting all day.”

At Baxter Brewing — be open to changing communication methods: One factor that should be a no-brainer, but which takes active effort, is simply keeping the lines of communication open. Baxter “is a young company,” says Livingston. “We kind of got together and said, ‘Let’s do this better than we’ve had the chance to do it.’”

The staff did reading and research, looked at the way other companies operated and relied on their own experiences, good and bad, at previous jobs. “The point where we’re at now has been through some trial and error. . . . The way we communicate may change as we grow,” Livingston says, “but because of the culture of communication, we can maintain that.”

At Geiger — insist on communication, and follow through: Geiger appears to be a bastion of communication. Not only is formal and informal communication encouraged, according to Lantz, but company representatives attend and host functions around the country every year, usually inviting any nearby employees to join. Often, says Lantz, they go out to dinner. “It’s a chance to have the face-to-face. It can’t always be electronic.”

But that’s only part of the equation and therein lies the final bullet: Acting on the communication. At Geiger, each year every employee is required to submit “ideas on how we can do better,” says Lantz. The company then mandates each employee actually help implement at least six of their ideas supported by their team.

So, the bottom line? While some very high-profile managers have been accused of employing officespeak (in 2014, Mark Zuckerberg was called out for his circular reasoning habit of starting sentences with “So . . .”), local businesses we connected with seemed to be making good, effective communication a priority.

Just the same, we are still going to need you to come in on Sunday. Mkay?

Terms of employment:

A sampling of insider lingo from area employers

As iconic bad manager Michael Scott will tell you, an office is a family. And like a family, most workplaces seem to organically develop a unique set of terminology, a sort of shorthand to facilitate communication. We asked some area businesses what words or phrases are used regularly that an outsider might not understand.

Dogs

Typically an exclamatory command, this phrase is often heard around Simones’ Hot Dog Stand in Lewiston. It sometimes gets used in conjunction with “a dozen.”

Sample usage: “Dogs in! And Jimmy, we need a dozen more!”

Gemba

A Japanese term literally meaning “the real place,” this word is often heard around Geiger offices in Lewiston and applies to the company’s practice of going “into the workplace (of clients) to see how work is done,” says Jo-an Lantz, chief operating officer. 

Sample usage: “It’s hard for someone to know how work is done before going in the gemba of another company.”

Put-away

In the parlance of the L.L. Bean monogramming room, this is an item that will require further processing, so it needs to be put away, back on the shelf where it came from, after being monogrammed.

Sample usage: “I thought it was a single, but there was actually more special processing, so it was a put-away.”

Wow Patrol

At TD Bank, there’s “a whole culture built around ‘the spirit of Wow!’” according to Adam Dyer, a six-year employee at the Auburn facility. This means recognition for going above and beyond one’s daily duties. Those who routinely “wow” their customers and co-workers can receive awards, honors and prizes. (Last year it was a trip to Panama). The “WOW Patrol” is sent around to recognize these achievers.

Sample usage: “Ellen has been doing great all week. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw the Wow Patrol at her desk today.”

Reekris

Used around the fermenters at Baxter Brewery in Lewiston, “reekris” comes from a popular Youtube video (the same video that inspired the name of their Bootleg Fireworks double IPA). It’s used “as an exclamation of excitement or disbelief,” says founder Luke Livingston.

Sample usage: “Reekris! This Phantom Punch came out great!”

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