What Lasts Longer - Business Buzzwords or Left Over Turkey ?

 

 

Every year, a fresh set of business buzzwords sweeps through boardrooms, strategy documents and LinkedIn feeds. They arrive loudly, promise transformation, some ideas get implemented, most quietly fade away. Some of buzzwords grow old faster than the Christmas turkey. 

 

In 2025, the most commonly cited business buzzwords were: 

• AI Agents 

 

To be clear, buzzwords are not inherently bad. Used fluently, in context, and expanded upon, they often reflect real shifts in technology or markets. If these terms were genuinely part of your 2025 management conversations, there’s a good chance your organisation was broadly keeping pace with change. 

 

But buzzwords, on their own, just like turkey leftovers, have a short shelf life. 

 

Which begs the question: what is the likely trending business buzzword for 2026, and will it matter more than the rest? 

 

We’ve been sniffing the air, reviewing the data, and looking ahead. We believe the next major business buzzword, for a pleasant change, will not be another piece of technology jargon. It will be the simple word LEADERSHIP. 

 

More specifically, it will be the concept of “ Leadership from shop floor to top floor.” 

 

By which we mean practical human leadership capabilities, practised and authentically demonstrated by people throughout the organisation, up and down the org chart; taking place every day. 

 

This naturally raises two questions: 

 

 

 

For much of the last century, leadership was positional. Workers worked, managers managed, and leadership was confined to those at the top. Authority flowed down the hierarchy, and leadership was something applied to teams by those with the right job title. 

 

That model no longer reflects reality in most businesses, and arguably hasn’t done so for some time. 

 

Also in need of at least an update, is the buzzword and concept of empowered employees. The term is at least a decade old, so if it was going to work, it should by now be part and parcel of every successful organisation. People were told to think, decide, collaborate and contribute wherever they felt they could add most value. And to take initiative, make things happen and even to take risks, with or without management knowledge and approval. At least, that was the intention behind empowerment. 

 

And so the role of ‘management’, within the ‘empowerment universe’, was to keep everything on course; ensuring discipline and control balanced the whims of the empowered employees. 

 

But then the role of management began to change. The new buzzword thinking came in that managers should ‘lead’, not ‘manage’. And whilst this principle, like all business buzzwords, is great in itself, it left the ‘empowered employees’ looking somewhat out of control. 

 

Much of modern management is still about coordination, communication and context-setting. Removing obstacles. Aligning effort. Making sense of complexity. These are all important functions, but are still in the zone of mechanical management rather than modern leadership. 

 

Modern leadership on the other hand, is about initiative, imagination and influence. Its about personal character traits such as drive, ambition, authenticity, gravitas, visionary thinking. Its all human, very human. 

 

Crucially, these leadership qualities are not, and shouldn’t be, the exclusive property of managers. They are capabilities and characteristics that should be looked for in a candidate when recruiting ANYONE, at any level of the organisation. 

 

That is the key point. Leadership is desirable, essential even, at every level. 

 

When we combine a clearer understanding of management, a broader definition of leadership, and the original intention behind employee empowerment, a new operating model begins to emerge. 

 

“Leadership from shop floor to top floor” becomes the organising principle and the new business buzzword for 2026. 

 

To be clear, people still have different job roles. Boards still set strategy, priorities and resourcing. Managers still manage and control. But conceptual leadership does not need to be concentrated at any particular level. Leadership can be embraced by everyone.  

 

This is the direction that leadership from shop floor to top floor takes us. 

 

 

In fast-moving, complex environments, organisations cannot afford to wait for leadership to cascade down a hierarchy. Decisions need to be made close to customers. Problems often emerge far from the view of senior leaders. Opportunities appear unexpectedly. 

 

And so, many organisations confidently embraced the empower the employees buzzword phase, but many skipped an important detail: what exactly were people being empowered to do, how would this functionally work, and what were we trying to achieve by doing it anyway ? As a result of muddled implementation and thinking, the idea of empowered employees became hit and miss. Great for some, but leaving others feeling queasy, much like turkey by the twelfth day of Christmas. 

 

And now an uncomfortable truth is emerging. Even in progressive organisations, we are seeing a drift away from empowerment. New rules are restricting flexibility. Decision-making authorities are getting tightened. Control and management disciplines are quietly creeping back in. The ‘empowerment version 2.0’ that emerged during COVID lockdowns went too far, we’re told, but the corrections being applied seem to be dragging us very far backwards. 

 

This does not suggest that empowerment failed or has had its day. Rather, it shows that empowerment was insufficiently defined and half-heartedly implemented (just like many a business buzzword before and since). 

 

Empowered employees remains a vital philosophy, but it only works when people understand what empowerment looks like in practice and if management are in place to control anything that gets misguided.  

 

But if managers are NOT about control, they are about leadership, who then, is in control? and where is the room for empowerment? 

 

 

Employee Empowerment was never about ignoring corporate traditions, disregarding set strategies or wildly going-it-alone, and it needs to be redefined. The role of the manager DOES need to include control and direction setting (not just 'leadership'), no one can just somehow ‘apply leadership’ to teams.  

 

Leadership should come from everyone and hence - leadership from shop floor to top floor is the key. 

 

Leadership – from shop floor to top floor means people... 

 

This kind of leadership can come from anyone.  

 

And when its in place: 

 

And thus, Employee Empowerment becomes a practical, workable model. 

 

That’s what leadership from shop floor to top floor delivers. 

 

 

So, what went wrong with the staff empowerment buzzword in the first place? Nothing, in principle. Like most buzzwords, the idea itself was (and is) sound. The problem with this and many other business buzzwords, was shallow explanation and weak implementation. 

 

In many cases, empowerment became a slogan rather than a strategy. It could have driven a profound shift in thinking, but instead it often created ambiguity and, paradoxically, the need for more rules rather than fewer. 

 

What makes “leadership from shop floor to top floor” different is that it is meaningful in its own right. It defines the target, the breadth of impact and the direction of travel. It is less a slogan and more a coherent strategy. 

 

 

At Elephant Leadership Camps, leadership from shop floor to top floor sits at the centre of everything we do. Our programmes are designed to develop leadership in everyone, at every level. Administrative assistants work alongside senior executives. Experience meets fresh perspective. Hierarchy gives way to collaboration. 

 

Using an immersive and gamified learning model refined over 20 years, and with more than 1,000 graduates to date, we focus on building self-knowledge, empathy and perception. These capabilities allow people to lead themselves, influence others, challenge thinking and perform with impact and credibility. 

 

Organisations do not become more adaptive, resilient or successful by merely parroting buzzwords. They do so by taking a buzzword, such as empowerment, thinking it through, developing as needed, and actually delivering on it.  

 

Just as leftover turkey becomes sandwiches, then pie, then curry, then dog food, every good idea needs developing over time. 

 

Make “leadership from shop floor to top floor” your next big thing. 

Join the herd, and find out more about what we do at www.elephantleadershipcamps.co.uk