Etym.from Old French aligner, later anglicized as align and repurposed in Silicon Valley circa 2014 by a strategy consultant who needed a softer synonym for compliance, see R. Hargrove, 'Terms for Transformation,' 2016.

A rhetorical maneuver that professes shared priorities to postpone substantive decisions and shift accountability into future milestones.

'Can everyone confirm shared priorities by EOD' - Proceedings of the 2019 All-Hands Meeting

Etym.from the navigational phrase 'north star', originally denoting Polaris, adopted into corporate strategy parlance circa 2012 by a boutique consultancy seeking majestic-sounding direction, cited in Strategy Glossary, 2015.

A rhetorical device that converts vague long-term ambition into an indefinite project timeline and absolves present commitments of measurable accountability.

'This will be our guiding light, pending resource allocation and metric definition' - Q3 Board Deck, slide 12

Etym.From Old French levier and Latin levare 'to lift', repurposed in corporate English during the 1990s by consultants seeking a noun that implied advantage without specification (Keane, 2003).

A managerial invocation that implies operational effectiveness without measurable criteria; leverage obscures accountability by presenting vague scalability as a remedy.

'Leverage existing platforms to unlock synergies across the portfolio' - Q2 Strategy Memo, slide 3

Etym.from Old French plate-forme 'flat shape', recontextualized by management consultancies and marketing teams in the early 2000s as a neutral label for strategic aggregation; see P. Holloway, Corporate Lexica, 2011.

A platform is a corporate abstraction that bundles unrelated features into a single investable object, thereby inflating valuations and postponing responsibility.

'We will build a platform to unlock network effects and synergize monetization' - Q3 Board Deck, slide 12