Want more productivity? Stop using corporate speak.
We no longer say what we mean in the workplace, and it is costly.
You have no doubt been subjected to corporate speak. And worse, you’ve probably been guilty of it too.
Across white-collar Australia, we sit in meeting rooms nodding to language that we do not understand. Graduates generate unnecessary work blindly chasing directives that are fluffy and nice. And executives make poor decisions because no one was brave enough to state an uncomfortable problem clearly.
So, why do we do this to ourselves? Like so much of the bizarre behaviour we exhibit in the workplace, fear is the culprit. Fear of not knowing, fear of offending, and fear of being disagreed with.
Like so much of the bizarre behaviour we exhibit in the workplace, fear is the culprit.
How often do you hear your colleagues say “I do not know”, or “I do not understand”? And, what have you come accustomed to think if they do? (As a junior, I was once advised to instead lean in with a look of maturity and wisdom and say “Tell me more about that”).
Major-General Chris Smith, Deputy Chief of the Australian Army, argues floral language in the miliary is borne of ignorance. In a speech at last year’s Chief of Army History Conference – one that piqued much interest online – Smith warned that “the way we speak to ourselves hints at something rotten at the professional core”. He drew attention to a line from a military report that read: “as long as land warfare requires the delivery of lethal effects to achieve military objectives, the weapons systems which deliver them remain fundamental to the way battles are fought”. His translation? “As long as war is violent, it’s a good thing to have weapons.”
It is funny until it is not. Smith’s point is that managerial language obfuscates the moral choices of the army. Communicating in opaque terms is like putting a veil over one’s gap in knowledge, covering it up and hoping no one notices. But the risk is that when a genuine crisis emerges, decision makers are not equipped with the right information.
Outside of the military, frameworks don’t always need to be complex, and often the fix is as simple as having the confidence to admit to our limitations.
Over recent decades we have come to adopt the word ‘VUCA’ to suggest that leaders in our world are subject to greater volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity than ever before. But what was ever stable, certain, simple and clear about our world in the 1980s and 1990s? (Paul Keating and Steve Jobs might have a few things to say). When we are too timid to admit that leadership in business has always been hard, we forget that lessons of yesterday’s leadership excellence – the importance of clarity, kindness, strategy – are just as useful (and hard to exercise) today, as ever.
Then there is the fear of offending. It has crept beyond genuine care for others and into avoidance of plain speech. We have all sat through meetings where each of us avoids saying what we mean, and yet each have a pretty good idea of what others think. It becomes a self-perpetuating trap: the more we avoid saying what we think, the more we are horrified when someone does.
But in a culture of kindness, transparency and focus on productivity: where people mean what they say, care for others, and focus on the business problem at hand – not interpretations of words or judgements of actions – all fair-minded viewpoints can be raised without offence.
Possibly worst of all, may be the fear of being disagreed with. A clear statement is a commitment that can be debated and proven wrong. But a sufficiently vague one is almost impossible to argue with.
The cost to this euphemistic varnish is astounding.
The cost to this euphemistic varnish is astounding.
What should be 30-minute meetings become 60 minutes, as people “build” on the words of others (read: repeat someone else for the sole purpose of being seen to agree with them), before taking no more than a baby step in the opposite direction.
Workers get things wrong. A study published in the International Journal of Business Communication showed that when participants were randomly assigned emails written in jargon, they reported lower confidence and less intention to seek clarification or share information than their counterparts who were given a non-jargon email.
And possibly the biggest drain on our productivity, is the fear and angst that is instilled in workers when they are required to spend all day inferring and interpreting.
We do not speak to our family members this way.
We do not speak to our family members this way. When your mum asks “How was your day?”, you do not reply with “I’m on track to meet key progress criteria as I engage in constructive conversations with critical stakeholders of the strategy refresh”. You tell her the truth: “Productive, but boring”.
If your sentence wouldn’t make sense to your mum, it doesn’t make sense to say it at work either.