Consider the following statement:

“We have robust networks of strategic assets that we own or have contractual access to, which give us greater flexibility and speed to reliably deliver widespread logistical solutions.”

When you read this, you probably glazed over this statement a little bit without little attention, and that’s exactly what people writing or saying these things want or expect from you. This statement came from Enron’s last annual report, where 12 months later the company stock was trading for less than $1 a share.

It is easy to wonder if there is not a simple way to communicate information and terminology is “fluffed” on purpose. People trying to hide something or be persuasive in their tendencies are perhaps the most notorious for this. I am not considering criticizing the technical language necessary to describe specific details in any industry. I’m criticizing the fluff language corporate speak. The kind of ambiguous terminology that makes up so much of our working life. It is not just inefficient, it allows for confusion and corruption to hide in plain sight. There is a dark side to jargon that allows people to hide things in plain sight without anyone noticing.   

This isn’t just used in business as it is abundant in politics as well, as infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff explains in this YouTube video on some of the tricks of language that he used to get things done for his clients.

Sometimes pages of documents are dedicated to hiding one message within the noise of clichés (that’s the old you didn’t read the fine print trick in movies like The Social Network and helps for people getting ‘Zuckerburged’).

It is valid to say things like “keep things high-level and go after the low hanging fruit”, but there aren’t that many reasons. Other times it’s to sound more professional like “doubling down on main profitable operations” sounds a lot more respectable than “Let’s do more of the stuff that makes us money”. These are legitimate ways to use corporate language. Mashing together too much of this together and it can render speech and writing all but incomprehensible.   

Interestingly the noise of corporate language is measurable. In 1946, a man name Doctor Rudolf Flesch designed a formula to calculate how easily understood something is, calling it the Flesch Readability score. The higher the score the easier it is to read and comprehend, the lower the score the more difficult it is.

Just a few landmarks to think about:

Newspaper comics: 93 / Sports Illustrated: 63 / Wall Street Journal: 43 / IRS Tax Code: -6(!)

Obviously, there are complex ideas that can never be expressed with a 90+ readability score, but most complex ideas can be expressed in the 30-50 range which is considered to be difficult. Reading below 30, the Flesch formula considers the document to be very confusing.

In the book “Why Business People Speak Like Idiots”, the authors use the Flesch readability test to analyze the shareholder letters from CEOs at the turn of the century. They analyze the set of well-respected companies and a set of companies that have been riddled with scandal.

At the turn of the century, well-respected companies like IBM, General Electric, Google, Berkshire Hathaway and Amazon all had reports in the 40 range of readability. Companies that had scandals like Enron had much more confusing letters coming in at the 20s and below. That’s because the companies that had scandals had every incentive to be very confusing and used vague terminology to do it while a company with legitimate business practices had every reason to be forthcoming.

How to Effectively Communicate to Stakeholders

When communicating assessment results, it is likely that no one knows more (or cares more) about the data than you do. Therefore, your role is to educate stakeholders about:

• Context / Background / Methods / Results (in context)

And to involve stakeholders in:

• Making sense of the results

• Identifying possible solutions or next steps

While stories cannot be supported for every aspect of the assessment project, they can boost the meaning of the data. To avoid jargon and planning a clear, concise way of communication, consider the following themes:

1. Who are the stakeholders?

Ideally you should know the stakeholders’ background and interest at the beginning. As you plan to communicate assessment findings, it is important to answer these questions for the audience:

o What does the audience need to know?

o How will the audience use the information?

2. What would be the best communication strategy?

Once information is obtained about the stakeholders, their needs, and how they will use the data, you can start to develop a comprehensive communication plan.

Depending on what your audience is most interested in, you may need to collect one type of data over another, or you may need to collect both types. This also may expand the evaluation, if different audiences respond better to different types of data across questions and outcomes.

3. What should be included in the report/presentation?

When collecting and using data to monitor the implementation progress and communicating to stakeholders, consider the following four questions:

o What went well?

o What needs attention and support?

o What should be continued?

o What should be modified, scaled back or eliminated?

4. Discussion, engagement and follow-up?

o What recommendations would they support, why?

o How many ways can you show the evidence?

o What are the costs, risks and benefits of the recommendations?

o Who stands to gain or lose? Engage and discuss

It is not uncommon for evaluation data to be confusing and, at times, contradictory, creating a challenge to construct clear and effective communications. This challenge is exacerbated when it is not possible to communicate to a particular audience all of the information they need to fully understand the evaluation findings.

Following these steps can help in avoiding technical jargon previously discussed. Obviously, all confusing jargon is not meant to hide corruption, but when there is corruption to hide, corporate language is a great way to do it. You can say a lot without saying anything at all or say everything while making it sound like nothing. So, let’s stop circumventing the normally understood value-added lexicon with derivative proxies and instead talk normally.