Tools

FLEALANCER
An irritating or insignificant outsider. In 2002, Charles Handy published The Elephant and the Flea, promoting portfolio working. The ‘flea’ was a heroic multitasker revelling in their fleadom. In tough times the small player gets short shrift and less respect, and the expression now tends to be used dismissively by big corporations (‘elephants’) of consultants and independents they want to brush off.

JOB-SCULPTING
Hand-crafting a job description that truly reflects ‘the inner you’. This phrase featured in a much quoted Harvard Business Review article of 1999. Back then the authors, Timothy Butler and James Waldroop, saw it as the task of talent managers responsible for shaping their subordinates’ career paths. Today the expression is typically used by victims of turbulence. Faced with an uncertain future, the individual seeks to reinvent her/himself (perhaps invoking the buzz-synonym reconfiguring). For cynics, meanwhile, job sculpting is a euphemism for simply making your job up as you go along.

Send your buzzwords, jargon and new and exotic usages to tony.thorne@kcl.ac.uk