Ban the buzzwords: speak clearly

I saw this on my Twitter timeline and, at first, thought it was a spoof but, after reading through the comments, I realised it wasn’t.

Keep this checklist handy when chatting with teams.

It isn't "simple", but over time I've gotten it out of my head so my head hurts less 🤣

I should boil it down into 100 threads. jk jk jk jk pic.twitter.com/WVB1Fp8A6g

— John Cutler (@johncutlefish) August 6, 2022

Some examples of items that you should consider when chatting with your team include…

Value-stream focused team alignment

Tight, high-signal/low noise feedback loops

Support multiple concurrent operating models

Who thinks this is a clear way to communicate? Let’s take a closer look at it…

But you see it everywhere in business – LinkedIn is a real hive of this kind of thing.

In my experience, over-use of buzzwords are often used to mask the paper-thin reality of what’s being said or simply to make people sound (at least to themselves) more intelligent. And It’s only when you interpret buzzwords back into clear English that you realise how often hollow a lot of them are.

It’s no coincidence that politicians are often found picking up and using buzzwords from business. What’s funny, though, is that outside observers often know how ridiculous it all sounds. The only people fooled by them, in my observance, are others are use them – it’s a never-ending cycle of back-patting and appreciation from the same group of people.

Let’s take a look at a couple of the examples above and interpret them…

• “Attempt to debias decisions” – “Make sure your decisions aren’t biased”.
• “Apply work-in-progress limits” – “Make sure people aren’t working on too many things at the same time”

None of these give any clue as to the why or how – it’s just telling us to do things. A lot of these are probably really good but the use of buzzwords means that many people will have no idea what they mean (myself included – I’ve interpreted a couple that I could work out, but many I honestly don’t know what they mean).

So, for 2024, make yourself a resolution to drop the buzzwords and write clearly. If nothing else, you’ll get a wider audience. And less people sniggering behind your back at how ridiculous you sound.

(Taken from long-term draft to publish, as part of Matt Mullenweg’s request to blog)