We’re reaching out to you today so we can put a stake in the ground, grab for the low-hanging fruit, and think outside the box.
Seems like a no-brainer now, but back when we started talking this way, we thought it was a game changer. A win-win proposition. We were speaking the same language, mangling the same metaphors, and we really thought every conversation would be value-added — bringing us more bang for the buck.
Well, it brought about a paradigm shift, all right. It moved the needle…but in the wrong direction. Turns out we’ve become parodies of ourselves. Irritating ones at that.
Drilling down into the problem, we find the stigma of cliché, and the way that the overuse of tired, misapplied jargon actually weakens our messaging. Dive deeper, and you see that talking like a rigidly programmed Business Bot destroys your differentiation. You become plain vanilla, just another face in the crowd.
You’ve got a lot on your plate, we know. This probably wasn’t even on your radar. We’re not asking you to reinvent the wheel, but going forward, maybe you can repurpose some of this drivel? Transition it into another role?
At the end of the day, your communications skills are seen by your customers, competitors and employees as key performance indicators, showing them just how much bandwidth you’ve got for your core competencies. If they think you’re just parroting the masses, well then you might as well be down the rabbit hole.
Death to jargon, is what we’re saying. Do we have your buy-in?
The C4
- The definitive guide to effective communications, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style includes every rule of English usage you can imagine.
- Seriously, read it. It’ll make you a better writer and speaker. (And it will turn you against insipid jargon, forever.)
- Its most vital advice, which if we follow it will end jargoneering for all time (amen), can be summed up in one very short sentence…
- “Omit needless words.”
