Humans are prone to cargo cult thinking. Presented with a successful or important person, we automatically copy their behavior, because their behavior must hav

Humans are prone to cargo cult thinking. Presented with a successful or important person, we automatically copy their behavior, because their behavior must have made them successful or important. I think that this is why usage of stupid idioms and phrases flows downward in hierarchies. Have you ever noticed an executive use a corpspeak phrase in an all-hands meeting and then seen it crop up immediately afterward in e-mail and meetings from lower-level management? It can be fun to ask them what a new phrase means in real terms, too -- often they don't really know.