Huddle Up, Stakeholders

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.

You may not have noticed, but there’s been this juggernaut of jargon that’s taken over the business lexicon.

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

1. The definitive guide to effective communications, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style includes every rule of English usage you can imagine.
2. Seriously, read it. It’ll make you a better writer and speaker. (And it will turn you against insipid jargon, forever.)
3. 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…
4. “Omit needless words.”

Huh?

"Walk with me. You've gotta meet this guy with the LMK. He's kinda this entrepreneurial social guru — thinking outside of the box in the green/sustainability space and developing concepts around sort of Web-based social media platform, and he's way past the AI crowd and now in a round two capital raise in the 501(c)(3) space with the people at NDPA sometime in Q1."

How many times have you scratched your head after hearing something like — no — precisely this sentence?

Let's say you miraculously navigate through the first part of the sentence. (You won't, but let's say you do.)

You're still in a brain freeze when you get to that last NDPA acronym. You're thinking NDPA...let's see...National Decorating Products Association? North Dakota Pschological Association? National Diploma in Performing Arts? National Drowning Prevention Association?

This might be amusing if it weren't true. Some business people just don't make sense anymore.

Why not gain credibility, become more productive, make those around you more efficient, and get more joy in your work life by simply looking someone in the eye when you hear one of these verbal log jams and anti-communications assaults and simply state to the perpetrator, "I don't have a clue of what you just said to me."