CIOs Sound Off on Tech Buzzwords That Need to Go

CIO as gymnast?

Carman Wenkoff,

chief information officer at

Dollar General Corp.

, nominates 2021 favorite “agile.”

“Too many meanings, and it’s seen as the hammer that can solve everything,” he said.

The buzzword that launched 10,000 books

Time to jettison “innovation.”

“I think ‘innovation’ needs to go away in the context of what we use these days because everything that we do has innovation built into that,” said

Anil Bhatt,

CIO at

Anthem Inc.

“We want to make sure that we are being more real about things as we move forward.”

Are we not men?

Citigroup Inc. CIO of its Global Consumer Bank

Shadman Zafar

requests that everyone deprogram from language best suited to machines, like “sync up.”

“Let’s use more human terms to describe human interactions,” he said.

Another one he would not miss is “actionable insights.”

“Any other kind would be useless so we don’t need to waste time on those other insights, and we can drop the ‘actionable’ adjective!” he said.

The buzziest of them all

Cardinal Health

CIO

Brian Rice

ponders the meaning of “digital transformation.”

“We’ve struggled with that one ourselves, like, what does ‘digital’ mean? What does ‘transformation’ mean? What does ‘digital transformation’ mean? So I think trying to find a better way to describe that would benefit us all.”

Opposite of analog

Paul von Autenried,

CIO of

Bristol Myers Squibb Co.

, has trouble with ‘digital.’ Not the word itself, but its use as a noun, as in, “Are you doing digital yet?”

“I’m constantly trying to ask people when they use the word ‘digital,’ follow it with a noun like digital strategy, digital capabilities, digital innovation,” he said.

The future is clouded

AmerisourceBergen Corp.

CIO

Mark Spykerman,

suggests everyone remove “cloud first” from their vocabulary.

“There are so many more ways to solve problems than just simply cloud,” he said.

Machine unlearning

That would be the ubiquitous “AI.”

Not that anyone’s against the use of artificial intelligence. AI will “provide tremendous value over the next several decades,” says

Dave Williams,

chief information and digital officer at

Merck & Co. Inc.,

despite the word itself being “just so overhyped and overused.”

Zendesk Inc.

CIO

Colleen Berube

agrees.

“It’s overused, misunderstood and presumed to be always good,” she said.

Title change

Francesco Tinto,

CIO of

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.,

said it drives him crazy when people use “product manager.”

“Everything is a product. Everybody’s a product manager,” he said.

Pro Tip

For those who’ve developed an unhealthy dependence on jargon,

Edward Wagoner,

CIO at Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., offers an antidote.

“I’ve started trying to challenge myself that if I’m using a tech buzzword that I would have to explain to my 80+ year-old mother (which is all of them), then I need to use more approachable, descriptive and inclusive language,” he said.