Motivation for The 30,000-Pound Gorilla
Motivation for The 30,000-Pound Gorilla
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or, perhaps, just living a normal life), you’ve heard about the phenomenal new book I co-wrote that details the 212 most annoying business phrases managers use.
Okay… you’ve never heard of it before this moment… I get it. But, now that you have heard of it, did you ever wonder what drove me to coauthor this 441-page monster? Well, if that describes you, read on!
In 2008, after decades of listening to knucklehead managers spout the most annoying analogies, clichés, and other jargon, I posted an article titled “The 25 Most Annoying Business Phrases” on this blog. The post was more of an attempt at catharsis than anything else. It felt good to write it.
The post languished for years; occasionally enjoying large, though short-lived spikes in traffic whenever shared. That is, until 2015, when the average monthly visits to the page grew above 2,000.
Two thousand visitors in a month to a blog post isn’t all that significant for many bloggers; however, the traffic never again waned – it grew.
Watching the demand increase for this old post, I realized there were millions of others in the workplace growing tired of listening to this endless stream of irritating sayings. So, I enlisted my oldest son Carson to help me build the ultimate guide to annoying business jargon – hoping, of course, to deliver the same cathartic effect to others.
While compiling our list of phrases, the biggest question for us became what to call this thing.
Fortunately, I remembered a cringe-worthy moment from an important meeting held more than ten years prior. In this meeting, an up-and-coming young manager where I was working told a group of peers and senior executives, “I think it’s time we all addressed the 30,000-pound gorilla in the room.”
The room fell silent… the awkwardness grew… the young manager shut his mouth for the rest of the meeting… and the perfect title for this book was born!
From the meaningless to the overused to the clichéd, we are inundated daily with annoying and ridiculous business phrases from the lips of otherwise well-meaning (and not-so-well-meaning) professionals.
Why so many of us (present company included) rely on the latest catch phrases or tired business jargon to relay a simple message is unclear. Whether lazy, blocked, or we just think it makes us sound important, we too often reach for prepackaged word groupings instead of constructing an original thought.
Perhaps this book can help us quit… though I doubt it. You can now buy The 30,000-Pound Gorilla in the Room on Amazon or wherever books are sold.
– TheManager
