The projector hummed, a low B-flat of corporate anxiety. A man whose title had at least four words in it, one of which was ‘synergy,’ pointed a laser at a slide that was 94% empty space. “We need to operationalize our key learnings,” he said, the words landing in the room with the soft thud of Styrofoam peanuts. “This will allow us to drive impactful outcomes and leverage our core competencies moving forward.” Heads nodded. Important, furrowed-brow nods. The kind of nods that say, I am also a serious person who understands these serious, empty words. In a room of 14 people, there were 14 sage nods. From the back of the room, near the cart of lukewarm coffee, the AV tech leaned over to his assistant. “So… do you want the slides in 16:9 or 4:3?”
16:9
Widescreen Clarity
4:3
Standard Focus
That question, slicing through the fog, was the only real thing said in the first 24 minutes.
It was a question about physics, about pixels, about the tangible world where things either fit or they don’t. It’s the world inhabited by people who provide concrete AV services and rentals, the ones who know that a plan to ‘create a dynamic event experience’ is meaningless until you know the required lumens and the number of XLR inputs. The tech’s question wasn’t about leveraging or interfacing; it was about reality. It had a testable, binary answer. The slide deck was either one size or the other. This clarity, this beautiful simplicity, felt like a foreign language in that room.
The Fog of Corporate Language
We’ve built an entire corporate culture on a language of ghosts. Words that float through meetings and email chains, signifying importance while conveying almost nothing. ‘Circle back,’ ‘deep dive,’ ‘touch base,’ ‘bandwidth,’ ‘synergy.’ It’s a smokescreen. It’s a tool of obfuscation that allows people to sound authoritative without having to say anything concrete, testable, or meaningful. And I’ll be honest, I’ve used it. I once wrote a report describing a project’s potential as needing to be ‘unlocked.’ Unlocked? What was it, a treasure chest? A diary? It was a pathetic attempt to sound profound when what I really meant was, ‘We haven’t figured out how to make money from this yet, and I’m worried.’ The jargon was a shield, protecting me from the terrifying admission of not having the answer.
A Language of Plausible Deniability
It’s a language of plausible deniability. If a project based on ‘leveraging synergies’ fails, who is at fault? The synergies, presumably. They must not have been leveraged with enough vigor. When you build a plan on pillars of smoke, you can’t be surprised when it collapses. The real problem is that this linguistic decay fosters a culture where clarity is punished. An employee who asks, “When you say ‘operationalize key learnings,’ do you just mean ‘write a report about what we messed up last quarter?'” is not seen as a hero of clarity. They are seen as difficult. Pedantic. Not a team player.
Asks concrete questions.
Nods silently.
I was thinking about this the other day because of a man named Hayden D.R. He’s a medical equipment courier. His world is the polar opposite of the conference room. For Hayden, ambiguity is the enemy. His dispatch doesn’t tell him to ‘interface with the logistical paradigm at the biosciences hub.’ It says, ‘STAT. Platelets. St. Mary’s, Room 444. Go.’
The World of Hayden D.R.: Precision in Practice
Precision isn’t a preference for Hayden; it’s the entire job description.
The difference between floor 3 and floor 4 is not a rounding error. A 14-minute delay is not something to ‘circle back on’ during the next weekly stand-up. It’s a failure with a human cost. When Hayden arrives, he doesn’t tell the nurse he’s there to ‘drive a positive patient outcome.’ He says, ‘Here are the platelets for Ms. Jackson.’ The language is brutally, beautifully efficient because the stakes are real. The work is tethered to the physical world.
In the office, the work has become unmoored. We spend our days managing abstractions of abstractions-spreadsheets that represent finances, presentations that represent strategies, emails that represent conversations. It’s no wonder our language has followed suit. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle. Vague language allows for vague work, which produces vague results, which must then be described with more vague language. The project budget of $44,444 is allocated to 4 different ‘strategic verticals,’ a term no one dares to ask for a definition of. Everyone just nods.
The Cost of Ambiguity
I find it endlessly frustrating, this whole performance, and yet I participate. I’ll sit in a meeting and talk about ‘the 30,000-foot view’ because it’s easier than saying ‘Let’s ignore the details for a minute and remember what our actual goal is.’ I fall into the trap because it’s a social lubricant. Using the right jargon signals that you belong to the tribe. It’s a secret handshake made of meaningless syllables. It’s a way of saying, ‘I, too, am a professional who understands the complex nuances of leveraging.’
Let’s go a little deeper on that idea of belonging. Years ago, a manager I respected told me that clarity is kindness. It took me a long time to understand what she meant. Providing clear instructions, clear feedback, and clear goals is an act of respect for your team’s time and intelligence. It gives them the solid ground they need to do great work. A culture built on jargon does the opposite. It creates a state of low-grade, constant anxiety. Am I understanding this right? Does everyone else get it? Am I the only one who doesn’t know what a ‘turnkey solution’ is? The answer, by the way, is that no one is entirely sure, but everyone is too afraid to ask. This fear consumes a tremendous amount of mental energy that could be spent, you know, actually working.
This isn’t just a pet peeve; it has a real, measurable cost. When a team spends 4 weeks ‘ideating on a new paradigm for customer engagement’ and produces nothing but a 24-page document full of stock photos and buzzwords, that’s 4 weeks of salary burned on linguistic performance art. This isn’t a hypothetical. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve probably even led the charge on it a few times in my past, to my shame. We held a 4-hour ‘blue-sky session’ that resulted in exactly zero actionable ideas, but a lot of sticky notes with words like ‘disruption’ and ‘transformation’ on them. We felt very productive. We accomplished nothing.
Time Burned on Jargon
Weeks
Actionable Ideas
A direct cost to clarity.
The Antidote: Relentless Pursuit of the Concrete
So, what’s the antidote? It’s the AV tech’s question. It’s Hayden D.R.’s dispatch. It’s the relentless, stubborn pursuit of the concrete. It’s asking the stupid questions. It’s replacing ‘leverage’ with ‘use.’ It’s replacing ‘reach out’ with ‘call’ or ’email.’ It’s replacing ‘action items’ with ‘things we will do.’ It requires a little bit of bravery. It requires being willing to be the person who stops the meeting and says, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand what that means. Can you give me a specific example?’
You might get some eye-rolls. You might be seen as slow. But you might also be the person who saves the project from drifting into the abyss of abstraction. You’ll be the one tethering the balloon back to the ground. That’s my new goal, anyway. I even counted my steps to the mailbox this morning. It was 144. It wasn’t a ‘journey.’ It wasn’t an ‘ambulatory initiative.’ It was 144 steps. A real number, measuring a real thing.
A real number, measuring a real thing.
