Undocumented Features

UF Postings Past: Say What You Mean

April 20, 2008 – 8:19 am

Abbreviations are getting out of hand in business. Every department of every busines seems to have hundreds. On top of that, we’ve all gotten on the band wagon of branding. The company intranet isn’t the intranet, its “The Informer” or “Mercury” or something else branded and sexy.

Let’s consider what this does for the business.

The pros:
*Abbreviations or shortened brand names enable easier communication for those in the know
*Better advertising- people ask “what is ?” and you get the chance to sell them

The cons:
*If all employees are not in the know, it impedes communication. For example: everyone probably knows what the intranet is. Everyone probably knows the company has one. Everyone also goes to use it when they need to. It’s part of their jobs. Why does it need a different name in order to communicate about it effectively? Why do you need to sell it? If you need to sell it, then it isn’t doing a good job for the company at what an intranet does.

*Employees have to learn what all these terms mean. Managers have to learn what thousands of them mean. Wouldn’t the company be better off if these people were spending their time learning to do their job better instead?

That second con is a big one. Everyone has a certain amount of bandwidth for receiving, processing and understanding information. They can only truly learn so much per given day. This is what the whole “information overload” crisis is about. If you are creating product names for internal applications that don’t need one for the sake of branding, or you are creating abbrevations for things that don’t need them, are you helping the company by eating up employee bandwidth for learning?

Certainly, corporate culture can help you spread your abbreviations and internal brands. Is this what you want to use your corporate culture for? Wouldn’t your company better profit from the corporate culture spreading values and knowledge instead?

The bottom line is this: Abbreviations are for things you already know. Brands are for selling things for a profit. Use them in the right places, and at the right times.

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