Getting Beyond the Jargon

Planning for entrepreneurial opportunities and innovation frequently requires the active participation of experts from diverse disciplines. Opportunities and innovations themselves often surface from the combination of the tacit and technical knowledge deeply embedded in each discipline. Consequently, how those insights are communicated can make or break the effectiveness of a planning effort.

As Voltaire said, “chance favors the prepared mind.” In other words, opportunities and innovations come earlier to those who, because of their preparations, put themselves in a position to see and understand the opportunity well before those who are less prepared.

Innovations are often conceived in the intermingling of technical insights and customer needs.  Ironically, however, many entrepreneurial opportunities are prematurely abandoned due to an inability to communicate them without the technical jargon in which they were originally conceived.  A Forbes magazine article (September 10, 2001, page 24), estimates that 30% of technology projects begun by companies in the U.S. are cancelled before completion, for just this very reason, costing the American economy more than $75 billion per year!

Every discipline develops its own jargon or “techno-speak.” Marketing has its own idioms, as do market research, finance, research, design, engineering, etc. Jargon can be a useful shorthand for communication among those in the discipline. Jargon allows people to discuss technical matters in a more efficient manner because of the tacit (and sometimes explicit) agreements made as to the connotation of the words and phrases they use. However, this tacit understanding is frequently not shared outside the boundaries of that discipline, function or department. As a result, jargon can create challenges, obstacles and erosion in the trust so basic and necessary for productive planning cycles and discussions.

Even commonly used words can become easily “jargonized” and endowed with a connotation that can trip the unsuspecting.  Last week I was in on a conference call discussing an upcoming meeting with a remote division of the company whose expertise, perspective and collaboration are essential to my client’s entrepreneurial planning efforts. Interestingly, the word “innovation” was used in the teleconference. It became clear from the voice at the other end that the intended meaning of the word was producing an opposite effect in the mind of the listener.

After the conference call we debriefed the conversation and re-awakened ourselves to how different the cultures were between this division (a recent acquisition) and that of the acquirer. This enabled us to redesign the approach to the meeting which, as a result, went far better than had we not gone through this “de-jargonizing” step.

In a former vocation, I learned an arcane distinction theologians make between two different modes of communication. One they refer to as dogmatik—idiom-laden language used by clerics when speaking with other “theocrats.” Dogmatik is best reserved for occasions when clerics get together and talk shop. The other mode—apologia—refers to a vernacular manner of communication employed when the theological experts speak to those who do not share their training, perspective or vocabulary.

Unnecessary trouble can arise when either of the two modes is used in context better served by the other. A person may be perceived as a raving fundamentalist (when using dogmatik to communicate with the uninitiated), or one may be viewed as naïve, paternalistic or even trivial (when using apologia when speaking to the experts). In either case, trust and authentic communication break down among the participants.

Plans are only as good as the organization’s ability to carry them out. Effective execution requires trusting (i.e., functioning) relationships between all participants, and trust lives or dies on the “currency” of communication (i.e., the “communion” in the communication). Therefore, for the sake of the strategy and its execution, it helps to find a language and vocabulary—an apologia of sorts—that works across disciplines. Innovations that work require it.


This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in November 2001. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.