Solutioning, if only I can orientate

The challenge, at the end of the day, is to ensure we have the bandwidth to optimize.

We all suffer through poorly written internal communication demonstrating the author has fallen in love with bizspeak, where perfectly useful words have been misappropriated for a new use.

How does this descent into undecipherable acronyms and meaningless jargon happen?

Lynn Espinoza, the president of Speak! Communications, suggests it’s because every company has both its own culture and its own language. We all move so fast that it’s more efficient to develop corporate shorthand. These short-hand references are meaningless to the outside world but well understood within the corporate micro-culture.

That works to a point, she says, but says the rationale doesn’t work for the awful jargon, however. Upper management uses jargon to sound powerful; lower levels use it to sound important, she argues.

Whatever the rationale, it impedes effective communication, both oral and improvement. And if we don’t each make an effort to get back to basic English, we’ll be doomed to read pronouncements such as: "It's all a matter of the specifics of who you're looking at and what you're talking to depending on where you are in the world."

Your favorite words or phrases?