Easy-to-process things feel truer, safer, and more appealing.
More quotes“Operationalising a cross-functional transformation journey” sounds like a committee dropping a filing cabinet on the reader.
Jargon has legitimate work to do when specialists need precision. A surgeon should not replace an exact clinical term with “that squishy bit”. But most corporate fog performs the opposite trick: it turns an ordinary thought into something nobody can challenge because nobody is entirely sure what it means. “We need sales and marketing to plan together” becomes “unlocking go-to-market synergies”. “Customers keep leaving” becomes “a retention headwind”. “We have not decided” becomes “the strategic direction remains emergent”.
Lovely. Fourteen syllables, zero decision.
The commercial cost is not merely irritated readers. Vague language permits vague ownership. Two teams can agree enthusiastically to “drive engagement” while imagining different audiences, actions and deadlines. The meeting ends with alignment; the work begins with archaeology. A useful test is to ask what somebody could do differently after reading the sentence. If the answer is nothing, the prose may be serving status rather than meaning. Replace the abstract noun with a person and a verb. Name the customer, the problem, the decision and the date.
Clear writing exposes a thin idea. That is the danger and the point. Whenever a phrase sounds impressively frictionless, poke it. There is often a small, frightened non-decision hiding underneath, wearing a lanyard and hoping the meeting ends on time.