Gobbledygook

Why do so many people at work talk gibberish in an effort to impress? In business meetings, I see it all the time. People spewing jargon phrases, technical words and/or buzz words aka gobbledygook. Sure, gobbledygook can impress at first strike but eventually it completely undermines a business. 

A decade ago, I used to think the biggest offenders were those from the IT world but recently I’ve come to the conclusion that it actually is the (digitally-creative) marketing folk who instinctively talk to impress. We sometimes sarcastically refer to it as ‘marketing speak’. I am thinking of words like: ‘clickability’, ‘snackable content’, ‘SoLoMo’, ‘contextual marketing’, ‘ideation’, ‘custom activation’, ‘STP’, etc. I mean, who comes up with these words/phrases anyway? 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not just marketing folk who do this. I would say, it is chronic and widespread in the business world. Accountants love to shock-and-awe with their own technical terms (e.g. amortization, impairment, acid test, etc) and a lot of business consultants, I must admit, love their neologisms too (e.g. monetise, six sigma, blue-sky thinking, game theory, 30,000 ft view(s), caveat, C-suite, exist strategy, triple bottom line, etc). Let’s also not forget the revered manager who is almost expected in the business-management world to speak gobbledygook. 

My point is that the workplace is littered with professionals (accountants, HR specialists, IT experts, management consultants, marketers, chartered managers, recently even lawyers) who speak their own language and I wonder, I just wonder, how much meaning is ‘lost in translation’. I also speculate if all this gobbledygook is necessary? Wouldn’t it be much simpler, if we all made an effort to speak in simple terms and use words that everyone understands? I mean, managing and running a business is not easy, so do we need to complicate matters with gobbledygook? 

Personally, I absolutely loathe it. I remember my first week at business school in the UK; what a scary and intellectually intimidating experience that was. Everyone seemed to be ‘discoursing’ fluently in MBA gobbledygook and I was completely lost. Thankfully, I quickly cottoned on and learned how to demystify it all.

In a nutshell, I came to realise that business administration is all about common sense. I mean if you spend more than you earn you will make a loss; if you treat your people like dirt you won’t get the best out of them; if you try to accelerate the growth of your business (as opposed to growing it organically) you’ll pay the price later in the business lifecycle; etc.  Admittedly, I am oversimplifying and exaggerating for effect but the basic principles of business are all rooted in common sense. 

In my management-consultancy work, I try very hard to adhere to that which is ‘simple’ (not to be confused with simplistic) and equally important ‘uncomplicated’. In fact, I am a big fan of Edward Debono’s arguments in favour of simplicity. It is also no coincidence that companies that are underperforming or failing are typically complex organisations.

Nothing beats an uncomplicated/focused strategy statement, an easily understood set of management accounts and/or a simple management structure. Yet isn’t that the purpose of managing a business: to get everyone to understand what they are meant to do, how they are meant to do it and who is responsible for what? I would think so.  

To make matters worse the overall level and quality of business English has deteriorated so much that even well educated managers seem to be picking up bad habits. Let’s face it, poor business English plus gobbledygook is a recipe for disaster. People commonly confuse ‘except’ and ‘accept’; ‘due to’ and ‘because of’; ‘borrow’ and ‘lend’; ‘e.g.’ and ‘i.e.’; ‘ensure’ and ‘insure’; ‘former’ and ‘latter’; ‘practical’ and ‘practicable’; ‘in lieu of’ and ‘in light of’; and the list goes on and on, ad nauseam. 

Look, I don’t want to sound like an intellectual snob, since even I, unfortunately, sometimes fall into the traps of gobbledygook (and I kick myself when this happens) but we really should all try to make more of an effort to speak/write proper business English at work.  

I’ve seen what communication failures can do to a business: dysfunctional teams; vertical communication meltdowns; demoralised employees; confused managers; poorly articulated strategy statements; departmental silos; low morale; ambiguity and misunderstandings at all levels; the implementation of the ‘wrong’ strategy; and the list goes on. 

Stop fuelling gobbledygook since it is destroying the workplace. Keep it simple, don’t try to impress and adopt a zero tolerance to impressive jargon terms and words that don’t mean anything. 

In the words of the novelist C.S. Lewis: ‘Don’t use words too big for the subject’.