Hey, Team! Huddle up! I want to leverage this platform and give an ROI on your time!
Corporate buzzwords: we hate them! They’re a pain point, but they never get downsized.
Now, I’m not here to suggest we onboard a holistic paradigm shift in business jargon — I mean, we can’t boil the ocean! But we can go for some low-hanging fruit.
Buzzwords are meant to pack pithy meaning, to be dense. (Dense. Let’s put a pin in that. We’ll circle back to it.)
Corporate cheerleaders want you to think buzzwords create a culture of inclusion — a “flexicon” to show off team spirit. (“Flexicon” is a buzzword I just made up, and wanted to run up the flagpole!)
But studies have shown that using jargon impedes trust. Like when HR informs us our company is “smartsizing”? How dense do you think we are? YOU’RE FIRING US!?!
Gen Zers are especially vulnerable … they’ve grown up getting instant answers from Siri. But workplace culture isn’t Googleable, so young employees may lean in to buzzwords and cling to them like corporate life rafts.
In fact, research has shown that employees who feel like they’re lower-status tend to use more jargon.
And who can blame you for feeling insecure if you get “layered”? That’s when your company slips someone in above you – like they’re long underwear, and you’re flesh that’s no longer fit to be exposed.
There’s jargon that won’t die, like “synergy,” but new words buzz all the time. Sorry, I’ll never get granular enough to learn what a “distributed cloud” is. Just sounds like lousy weather.
Look, here’s some radical candor: I suspect buzzwords are really about people using poetry to distract from the fact that all they’re doing is trying to make money, because that’s all most buzzwords are — metaphors. Idea showers, growth hacks — figures of speech.
Disruptive action item: Just speak real-human-people words. If you love metaphors so much, read poems! There are some really good ones to unpack. I mean, Shakespeare was a thought leader, and he didn’t even future proof his content.
Just compare your boss to a summer’s day, and she’ll get rid of all that layering.
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Story produced by Sari Aviv. Editor: Chad Cardin.
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