{"id":13082,"date":"2016-04-10T18:25:37","date_gmt":"2016-04-10T17:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/?p=13082"},"modified":"2020-09-23T15:37:12","modified_gmt":"2020-09-23T14:37:12","slug":"business-jargon-why-it-goes-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/business-jargon-why-it-goes-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Business jargon \u2013 why it goes on"},"content":{"rendered":"

Business jargon has been a laughing stock for years. Everyone says they want to get rid of it. But still it goes on. Websites, reports and speeches are littered with paradigms, stakeholders and matrices. Why? Perhaps it\u2019s because it isn\u2019t just an affectation, but a protective layer that many people just cannot shed. It hides too deep a\u00a0lack of self-esteem. It\u2019s because the fear of being mocked for using jargon is nothing to the fear of looking stupid.\u00a0 Or as Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert cartoon, said: \u201cI think it\u2019s a surrogate for being confident.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"I was once asked to edit a business report that contained the word \u2018utilise\u2019. So I did what I always do and replaced it with \u2018use\u2019. \u00a0This is because I have yet to find a sentence in which \u2018utilise\u2019 means anything more than \u2018use\u2019. The next day I spoke with the manager in charge of the project and he said: \u201cI know what you mean about that \u2018utilise\u2019 thing, but do we have to just say \u2018use\u2019? \u00a0Can\u2019t we find a higher-value word?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018A higher-value word?\u2019 Interesting phrase. I thought I\u2019d heard it before, but couldn\u2019t remember when. \u00a0I responded by asking the manager what he meant and gradually drew out the fact that he was concerned that his report should be \u201cimpressive\u201d to its audiences. And I guessed that he thought that being impressive meant using \u2013 or presumably \u2018utilizing\u2019 \u2013 words that were long, or at least a little removed from what ordinary people say in everyday situations. Conversely, if he used simple words, people might judge him to be, well, simple. A little later in the conversation \u2013 to test my theory \u2013 I suggested saying something like \u201cCross-functional teamwork enhances our capacity to deliver ground-breaking solutions\u201d. He loved it! I\u2019d found one person\u2019s motivation for using convoluted business jargon.<\/p>\n

I was grateful to this guy. I think he was being honest about something that many people feel but probably wouldn\u2019t admit. I think some people have a sense that to make a good impression you need to use a special kind of language. It\u2019s the linguistic equivalent of wearing a suit instead of T-shirt and jeans. At the middle management level, it can be something of a weapon in the corporate battle-ground. If I say \u201cWe need to have better relationships with our suppliers\u201d, then I\u2019ve made my opinion clear, but I\u2019ve opened myself up to criticism. Someone can disagree by pointing to the wonderful procurement project they just completed. Someone else can put me down by saying \u2018Well, that\u2019s obvious\u2019.\u00a0 But if on the other hand I say \u201cI think there\u2019s always scope for deepening the partnership dimension of the interfaces all along the value chain\u201d, no-one dismisses it as obvious. And if someone then raises the procurement project, I can tell them that, of course, this was indeed the very project I was thinking of when I made that remark \u2013 as well as several others of course.\u00a0 Confronted with a real jargon supremo, many people just fold, nodding sagely, but feeling stupid.<\/p>\n

So there is a real reason for using jargon \u2013 not a very nice one \u2013 and indeed I have had a few clients, a small minority, who have actively wanted it. They have come to me as a \u2018writer\u2019 in the belief that I will provide words that sound good \u2013 not words that tell the story \u2013 but words that make an impression. \u00a0Typically such clients have been managers asking for help in putting together a paper \u2013 perhaps their first paper \u2013 to be read by senior executives. My hunch is they are terrified of looking stupid and are looking to me to wrap their vulnerable thoughts \u2013 or lack of any distinctive ideas \u2013 in verbal armour. This is absolutely the wrong instinct, because the more words are used to impress, the less they communicate.\u00a0 And once you reach the real decision-makers in business, the CEOs and Chairmen, they have no time for ambiguous words or phrases. They need to understand things clearly and be able to express things clearly in their own turn. They want to hear the facts in direct terms. Customers, too, want plain speaking. The audiences that matter aren\u2019t impressed by long words, but by clear ones.<\/p>\n

\"\"In the academic world, as well as business, there is\u00a0a tendency to use words to impress. At college I quickly understood the game and set out to dazzle professors and examiners with obscure words and elaborate sentences. And it worked. I got good grades in all my exams. But I then went to work for a local newspaper, the\u00a0Surrey Mirror<\/em>, and came down to earth with a bump. My first news editor told me: \u201cYou\u2019re not writing for your professors now. You\u2019re writing for Mr and Mrs Miggins in Acacia Avenue. Make it snappy. And make it sing.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Making it snappy \u2013 and making it sing \u2013 was harder than any academic essay I had ever written. Explaining complex things in simple language \u2013 which is what journalists do \u2013 is much harder than explaining simple things in complex language. The odd thing is that it doesn\u2019t look it. Because the individual words are not themselves unusual, it looks like something anyone could do. But it isn\u2019t. \u00a0It is harder to communicate \u2013 to genuinely communicate \u2013 than simply to impress. \u00a0It\u2019s easier to use abstract words that can mean several things, and are therefore confusing, than to find tangible words that accurately describe the uniqueness of a situation.<\/p>\n

Once you have moved from a world of verbosity and ambiguity to a world of brevity and clarity \u2013 as I did at the\u00a0Surrey Mirror<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 you can\u2019t go back. Nothing will now persuade me to use words that I \u2013 as a reader \u2013 would not be sure I understood. And the disciplines I learned as a reporter then are the same ones I use as a corporate writer now.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why after testing my manager friend with the line \u201cCross-functional teamwork enhances our capacity to deliver ground-breaking solutions\u201d, I suggested we make it even better by saying what we meant. Reluctantly he agreed to a translation \u2013 along the lines of: \u201cWe encourage people with different skills and backgrounds to share ideas because this increases innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n

And I also remembered where I\u2019d heard the phrase \u2018higher-value word\u2019. It was playing Scrabble \u2013 where the whole idea is not to use words to communicate but to score points by using the least common letters. That\u2019s why the best words in scrabble are ones like quartzy, musquashes or zyxomma. \u00a0And there\u2019s a lesson for business communications here. If your aim is to score a point, use words that are as weird as possible; but if you simply want to make a point, try ordinary ones \u2013 they work better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Business jargon has been a laughing stock for years. Everyone says they want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}