Recycled Bullsh-IT

I have always felt that I have a good grasp of the English language and can even string the odd sentence together (the even ones were always tough, though). 

One of the great joys of English is the fun you can have with the many meanings of the words and sentences you can construct with the simple building blocks of the language. With fewer endings than most languages, we take pleasure by amusing each other with double-entendres (“I’m pleased to be getting a beer belly: I’ve always wanted a father figure”), euphemisms (“Pointing Percy at the porcelain”), and puns (“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana”).  Also, the whole of The Two Ronnies’ Four Candles sketch for homophones.

It is also possible to be precise and unambiguous with English so that your audience is absolutely clear on the message you wished to get across. English literature is full of great works of art providing a shared world for millions of readers. 

However, when it comes to having a straightforward conversation in an organisation, I have encountered some significant issues in the definition of simple words and terms. The two biggies that need a common definition (or Disambiguation as Wikipedia would say) at the moment are ‘Transformation’ and ‘Service’, but the list is quite extensive – ‘agile’, ‘Strategy’, all Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs), and any phrase starting ‘Business…’

 At this time of manic change, ambiguity stops being funny and becomes a real pain. In our connected world there are many outcomes to achieve for many people that need to be stated, shared, agreed and acted upon. At each stage of this process there is significant potential for misinterpretation, normally innocent but sometimes deliberate – sorry to those who have had to work with me when I’m in a spiteful mood. In the accelerated approach of agile, precision is even more important, particularly at the use-case level.

It no longer surprises me when I work in companies who have failed to agree on nomenclature. In most cases, they don’t even understand that there is a problem here. Although psychologists and NLP practitioners tell us that about 70% of communication is non-verbal (I know I have quite loud body language), for business purposes the remaining 30% (i.e. words) are very important. In the current distributed world of Zoom and Teams, words have become significantly more important as it is more difficult to smell the bullsh*t when you’re not in the same room.

Consistency of meaning for these simple, but overused, words is becoming a pre-requisite for effective communication across multi-disciplinary teams used to their own specialised definitions. In these circumstances a glossary is very useful to ensure that the meanings of the terms are discussed, and one or more definitions are agreed amongst all parties. A good example is a corporate data dictionary for master data and KPIs.

This may seem petty and bureaucratic, but clear communication will help to reduce stress and increase understanding for everyone. As will reading Roger’s Profanisaurus from Viz Magazine.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

 “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things.”

 “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

 Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

John “Cheshire Cat” Moe