Jargon, Jargon Everywhere…

Raven over at Raven’s Brain posted a great piece on business jargon a while back.  Business Jargon gives me the screaming heebeegeebees (spell that on a bar bet sometime).  I think it’s one of the greatest enemies of any project manager, leader or consultant.  It’s our jobs to communicate better.  Adding jargon which people may or may not be familiar with obscures meaning and impedes communication.  If you’re marketing this way or tossing it in to ‘spice up your presentations’, you might be selling better, but you’re shooting off your own foot.

All of these are reasons I think everyone should read Raven’s post, and the various places she links to.  As a PM, leader, consultant or otherwise, you can’t afford to not know what people are talking about, and for better or worse, jargon is a big piece of our lives.  Understanding communication and translating it to those not in the know is a big piece of what we all do.  The business landscape is loaded with people who feel that they need to insert this stuff into their daily conversations and writing in hopes of looking more professional, and we all have to be able to handle that.

Teenagers do this too- it’s why they say ”like” and “so” and various other slang a lot to seem more cool.  The next time you start to reach for your vault of business jargon to spice something up, think about what your last conversation with a teenager… :)

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