Many people are tired of the disingenuous management-speak which flows freely in business. Ensure your next meeting or promotion isn’t hung-over with jargon.
Clients and prospective clients often switch off when they hear mere catchphrases like “solution”, “results driven”, “win-win”, “go off-line”, “get on the same page”, “value proposition”, and “value added”.
There’s even a chance that you became successful with adept use of the same vocabulary which represents this mindset and is now becoming a negative.
Today, simpler language and clearer communication - words and expressions which don’t require that you’re “in the know” to use and understand - should be the stuff of your everyday conversations with clients and prospective clients.
Reasons to avoid management-speak and buzzwords, include, among others:
- it’s boring
- it’s generic and insufficiently specific
- often it doesn’t sound sincere or real
- it may make some clients feel distanced or inferior
- it straightjackets you as a conformist within narrow fashions in management
- it does little to differentiate or distinguish you from many of your unimpressive competitors
- it can make you look as though you’re obfuscating.
Every profession creates its own jargon. Besides allowing insiders to communicate in shorthand, it produces a great barrier to others. Many legal professionals have invested considerable energy in breaking down these shibboleths, and converting legalese to technical terms to plain English documents.
Too often, though, in the quest to look knowledgeable, these same professionals have been overly eager to adopt the mantra of modern management and corporate culture, only to create a whole new set of problems for themselves, and their clients.
Rather than merely mentioning that you have a "value proposition", state what is !
Don’t turn your clients off with near meaningless buzzwords.
Watch it: as the CEO of one of Australia’s top companies recently said to me “when our people use management buzzwords, I’m irritated - when our external lawyers get into corporate-speak, I want to tell then to take their jargon and stick it in their core competency !”
There are exceptions: a few clients are completely wedded to management-speak, and worship at the shrine of buzzwords. When with them, follow their lead: ape their jargon. It will change with time - keep up with their fashions.
Never be caught out using yesterday’s buzzword !
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