The fluorescent lights in Conference Room 4 hum at a frequency that suggests they are trying to communicate something painful. I’m sitting across from a young woman named Sarah, a new hire whose eyes are currently darting between her notepad and the senior VP of ‘Strategic Enablement.’ The VP has just spent 14 minutes explaining that we need to ‘socialize the roadmap’ to ensure ‘cross-functional alignment’ before we can ‘leverage our core competencies’ for the upcoming ‘pivot.’ Sarah looks like she’s trying to solve a quadratic equation in her head while being yelled at in a language she’s never heard. I feel a familiar itch in my left palm, the one that only flares up when I’m surrounded by people who use words to hide meaning rather than reveal it. I recently felt so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of non-information that I mentally turned it off and on again, hoping my brain would reboot into a mode where ‘synergistic touchpoints’ actually meant something. It didn’t.

Wyatt knows, as I do, that the corporate glossary is a defense mechanism. It’s a way for people to feel like they are doing ‘strategic work’ when all they are really doing is renaming things that already exist. We’ve turned the office into a place where you don’t ‘fix a problem,’ you ‘remediate a pain point.’ You don’t ‘talk to a coworker,’ you ‘engage a stakeholder.’

The Historical Disconnect

I remember a time, maybe back in 1984, when language in a workspace was a tool, not a barrier. If a machine broke, you said the machine was broken. You didn’t say the ‘hardware infrastructure is experiencing a period of sub-optimal performance metrics.’ This linguistic inflation has reached a point where we need a dedicated translator just to understand our own emails. I’ve seen 34 different versions of the same memo, each one more obscured by jargon than the last. It’s a game of status. If you can use the word ‘fungible’ in a sentence without flinching, you’re part of the club. If you ask what it means, you’re the guy who doesn’t ‘get the vision.’

I find myself participating in it sometimes, which is the most frustrating part. I’ll catch myself saying ‘bandwidth’ instead of ‘time’ and I’ll feel a little piece of my soul evaporate. It’s a contagion. We use these words because everyone else does, and soon, we forget how to speak like human beings.

There is an inherent honesty in technical machinery. When you look at the precision required by something like Xinyizhong Machinery, you realize that there is no room for ‘strategic fluff.’ This is why Wyatt gets so frustrated. He spends his days dealing with the cold, hard reality of steel and labor, only to come into these meetings and be told that we need to ‘architect a paradigm shift.’

The Contagion of Complexity

I once spent 74 hours rewriting a manual because a consultant told me the tone wasn’t ‘aspirational’ enough. I had used words like ‘press’ and ‘hold.’ Apparently, I should have used ‘activate’ and ‘sustain.’ This is the kind of madness that consumes our professional lives. We are so afraid of being seen as simple that we become incomprehensible. I’ve analyzed over 84 corporate mission statements in the last year, and 94 percent of them use the exact same 14 words in different orders. They all want to be ‘innovative leaders’ in ‘scalable solutions.’ None of them say they want to make a good product that doesn’t break. That’s too ‘tactical.’

We’ve reached a point where the glossary has become the job. People are promoted based on their ability to navigate these linguistic labyrinths. I watched a guy get a 24 percent raise last year simply because he was the only one who could explain what a ‘digital transformation journey’ was, even though we were just moving our spreadsheets to a different server. This is why the jargon persists. It’s a shield against the terrifying possibility that what we are doing isn’t actually that complex. We are terrified that if we stop saying ‘value-add,’ people will realize we aren’t adding any value.

The Cost of Obscurity

The irony is that this jargon actually creates the very problems it claims to solve. We talk about ‘silo-busting’ while using language that builds walls between departments. We are like the builders of the Tower of Babel, but instead of different languages, we are all using the same English words to mean completely different, or often nothing at all. I’ve seen 54 projects fail not because of a lack of skill, but because of a lack of a common vocabulary.

Wyatt A.J. stands up. The meeting has been going on for 114 minutes. He says, ‘I’m going back to the floor. When you guys figure out if we’re actually making more units or just renaming the ones we have, come find me.’ He walks out, and for a moment, the room is actually quiet. Then, the VP clears his throat and asks if we can ‘circle back to the action items.’ The spell is broken. The glossary wins again.

The Path to Clarity

I wonder what would happen if we all just stopped. If we committed to only using words that a 14-year-old could understand. If we admitted that ‘optimizing’ just means ‘making it better’ and ‘utilizing’ just means ‘using.’ We’d probably save about 34 hours a week in meetings alone. But that would require a level of vulnerability that most corporate cultures aren’t ready for. It’s easier to hide behind the jargon. It’s safer to be ‘aligned’ than to be right.

I go back to my office, sit down, and turn my computer off and on again. Maybe this time, the reboot will take. Maybe this time, I’ll find the words that actually mean something. Or maybe I’ll just find another way to say ‘nothing’ in a very strategic way. In this world, we don’t ask for help. We ‘request additional resources to mitigate a bottleneck.’ It’s a long way to go just to say we’re drowning.