Say What You Mean

A number of months ago CareerBuilder.com released a business survey that identified the most offensive corporate and business buzzwords that plague our workplaces. Perhaps you have used one or more of these yourself or know persons who do. The top five offenders were: 1) Outside the box; 2) Low-hanging fruit; 3) Synergy; 4) Loop me in; and 5) Best of breed, Incentivize, and Mission-critical (tied). Let’s drill down into the data and bring to the table a proactive list of actionable items that could cure leaders and their followers from this language lingo epidemic. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

The workplaces I encounter are already complicated and difficult to navigate. There are often cultural challenges, different levels of willingness and ability, diversity issues, and even family dynamics at work every day. Why would we want to make the situation worse by filling memos and meetings with useless words and phrases that further confuse each other? Besides, these words often carry undue weight, as though only the smartest businesspeople can master their application.

Communication is a complicated process. Few leaders are good listeners and too many toss buzzwords about like clichés. This practice does little to bring clarity or understanding into the workplace. A far better approach would be to ban business jargon altogether and instead use words and phrases that allow us to explore the context of a given situation or simply express what we actually mean.

Instead of imploring others to think “outside the box” we could promote our need to be creative or to simply think differently about a problem. Rather than picking the “low-hanging fruit” when considering options we could invite everyone to focus on the simplest ways to achieve our goals. Leaders who wish to model this change in conversation will probably need a cleansing of sorts so their own vocabulary can become, and remain, “jargon-free.” In serious cases intervention may be required.

I’m pretty sure that leaders and followers alike are tired of corporate buzzwords. With some practice and discipline it might be possible to reinvent how we communicate in the workplace. If we incentivize the right learnings, create synergy around best of breed practices, and circle back with success stories that increase our institutional bandwidth we just might have a chance for success. Sounds like an out of the box idea to me! On second thought...maybe I need to rephrase that.