#13 The Friday Digest — Going jargon neutral

“Pivoting to playbooks & leveraging best practice will empower our autonomous, cross-functional teams…”

Say what?!

Statista recently asked 1000 U.S employees to share their most hated office jargon. Any of these ring a bell?

Summary of Statista research as shared by Corporate Rebels

Despite not making the top 10, pivot is my personal ‘favourite’

To quote Amy Edmondson:

“Teamwork is right at the top of this list of most hated office jargon. My mind is reeling with questions, even though I’ve written two books on the subject.

Do people dislike the actual act of collaborating? Are they sick of the hype around teamwork? Do they dislike the WORD teamwork because it’s often part of a lazy platitude like “good teamwork, everyone”? (Praise should be more specific than this.). Or maybe they are just exhausted from working on teams that do not have 1) a clear mission and 2) clear rules of the road (delineation of things they will and will not do as a team).”

An interesting perspective but let’s not get started on platitudes…

Research & Opinion indicates that business jargon can:

• Create distrust
• Exclude those unfamiliar
• Cause confusion

If we trust this information, why do we experience this ‘phenomenon’ so frequently in the corporate world? I’ll leave that for you to decide on this fine Friday morning…

We can all be found guilty of speaking in riddles at times — lord, I used “false dichotomies” in a recent email — yet these words & phrases carry meaning. If you don’t explain this meaning or what you’re seeking, consider the impact? For example, when asking for best practice or a playbook, is this what you really want or is it your interpretation of something you’ve seen or heard elsewhere?

Definitions with added guidance taken from Dave Snowden’s keynotes on Cynefin

Perhaps there’s some value in deliberately choosing our words so we can be inclusive and clear about what we mean?

Share intent, speak (and write) in simple language, invite clarifying questions and confirm the outcome you’re looking for e.g. “I want a booklet that contains multiple options for…”. As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out.

Let’s go jargon neutral.

One more thing; if you catch me using jargon, help me by calling it out (thanks Mr G Ralph!)

Go well.