Communicating in a clear and relevant manner should be the goal for anything you write. It’s quite easy really – find the simplest way to outline your intentions and more people will actually understand what you are saying.
Anything that gets in the way of clear and relevant communications should be ditched from your writing and the usual culprit is jargon. Buzzwords and jargon clutter communication and create damaging distance between you and other people.
The whole purpose of communicating is to connect and find common ground. Jargon is junk when it comes to conversation or presentation. It is not ear friendly. It doesn’t impress people.
If you have to resort to using jargon in your conversations (written and oral) then you simply aren’t trying hard enough. If you can’t explain a concept to someone who has never heard of it before without using jargon then maybe you just don’t understand it as well as you think you do.
I appreciate that we all have our business vocabularies, and that sometimes it’s appropriate to use jargon. Like when everyone you are talking to understands it. But outside of your business I don’t believe there is room for jargon at all – you certainly don’t need another vocabulary that makes it more difficult for people to understand you.
In many ways I think jargon is just a lazy way of communicating. It’s used to counteract a lack of creativity or trotted out looking to impress.
Some industries are rife with jargon and the finance sector is the worst culprit in my view. Small wonder then that 8 out of 10 Australians say they are baffled by the dense technical jargon that is bandied about so readily by advisors.
Much of this jargon may be vital shorthand for the industry but for those of us that are not industry participants, a trip to the dentist is preferable to trying to come to grips with the technical concepts and complicated terminology of the finance sector.
Take superannuation for example – it means saving for your retirement doesn’t it? Why then do I need to be bombarded with terms like “default option”, “preservation”, “retail fund”, “rollover”, “defensive assets” and “anti-detrimental benefit”? If something is anti-detrimental, doesn’t that mean it’s good? So wouldn’t it be clearer to say “good benefit”? And since all benefits are by definition good, wouldn’t it be even simpler to just say “benefit”?
But not all jargon is industry-related. Some jargon is just used by people who are looking to impress, to be seen to be in-the-know, who think it somehow makes them seem superior. Yeah, right.
If jargon and buzzwords are driving you nuts, check out unsuck-it – it’s a nifty website that translates incomprehensible terminology into words that make sense. Here’s a few examples:
Accelerated Emergence of High Maturity Behaviours = Faster results
Baxtrapolate = Derive requirements from a predetermined solution, or make shit up
Boilerplate = Mindless filler, standard text to be re-used in documents
Greenwashing = Superficially eco-friendly
Realise Negative Gains = Accept losses
That last one is almost as bad as anti-detrimental benefit. Only in the finance industry!
So the next time you sit down to write something or open your mouth to say something, have a think about the words that you are using. If your 8 year old kid can’t understand what you’re saying, chances are some or all of your audience isn’t going to either. And if they don’t understand you, maybe they can understand your competitor better. Don’t give them the opportunity to find out.