How concrete imagery is more memorable than abstractions

“Drive engagement” is not a strategy. It is a fog machine.

Concrete language forces an awkward question: what would somebody actually see? “Improve responsiveness” becomes “reply before the working day ends”. “Maintain vigilance” becomes “check the sender before opening an unexpected invoice”. “Streamline collaboration” becomes a designer, developer and client commenting on the same mock-up. Suddenly disagreement has nowhere tasteful to hide.

This matters commercially because abstractions allow everybody to applaud a different idea. A board approves “customer centricity”; Support expects better tools, Product expects more research, Finance expects retention to rise by magic. The phrase travels beautifully because it carries almost nothing. Concrete actions are less glamorous and far more useful. They can be observed, taught, priced and challenged.

The trick is not to ban every large idea. A brand, strategy or principle needs abstraction to travel across situations. Give it somewhere to land: an object, behaviour, moment or decision. Ask what changes on Monday. Ask what customers will notice without being told. Ask what someone must stop doing. Ancient stories kept actions because actions survive retelling; modern organisations keep nouns because nouns survive committee review. That is precisely the problem. If nobody can picture the claim, they cannot tell whether it happened. Fog photographs well in a strategy deck. It remains a dreadful operating system.