What Jargon Says About Your Company Culture

On May 20, join me at HBR's annual leadership summit with master classes, interviews with the CEOs of AT&T and Mattel and an interactive case discussion led by Harvard Business School Professor Kareem Lakani. This all virtual day will give you practical frameworks to lead with purpose and strengthen culture across your organization. To learn more, go to hbr.org/leadershipsummit. See you there. Welcome to HBR on leadership. These episodes are case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts. Hand selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. I'm HBR's senior editor and producer Amanda Cursey. If you've ever wondered why certain phrases seem to spread through a workplace, you're noticing something leaders should keep an eye on. The way people talk can sharpen understanding and keep teams moving together, or it can muddy messages and leave some colleagues unsure whether they're fully part of the conversation. In this idea cast episode from 2019, linguist Ann Kursan explains how jargon takes hold, what it suggests about how an organization operates, and how leaders can choose words that bring people together rather than push them apart. Here's host Kurt Nickish. Do you architect end-to-end synergies by operationalizing outside the box iterations? Are your emails filled with drilling down, touching base and moving needles? Is it your MO to sling ROI and B to B at the water cooler? Or are you this sort of person who finds business jargon annoying? Either way, this episode is for you. Like it or not, business language is a reality. And today we're going to talk about where these buzzwords come from, what purpose they serve, and their unintended consequences. Here to talk about this, and also about how English is evolving as the global business language is Ann Kursan. She's a professor of English at the University of Michigan, and an author of several books on language, her latest is Fixing English. Ann, thanks so much for joining us. By pleasure. Let's just start with the basics. To you, when you hear the term business language, what does that mean? How is business language different? And how should we be thinking about it differently than kind of everyday language? When you say business language to me, the first word that comes to mind is jargon. And I don't use that in as negative a sense as many people use it. As a linguist, I think about jargon as the words or the lexicon that is specific to a profession or a pastime. And we know that when groups of people get together and are involved in a shared enterprise, that they will often create and use a set of specialized terms. That kind of language can provide you with useful shortcuts. It also can create a sense of insiders and outsiders, and there are both benefits and drawbacks to that insider outsider distinction. Is that where a lot of the annoyance with jargon comes from, being on the outside? I think the annoyance with business jargon in particular comes from a few different places. Certainly one of them is going to be people who feel like they're on the outside. One of them is a concern, and I think sometimes a fair concern, that jargon is euphemistic. So you'll hear people worried about euphemisms like restructure, which they'll say is kind of a business jargon, but really it means that you're letting people go. And they'll say letting people go is a euphemism for firing people. Another place is that people complain about new words a lot. Remember those new words are coming from them. People complain about the new words that are coming out of social media. Pop culture out of slang, and they say young people are ruining the language for hundreds and hundreds of years. People have complained about new words. That seems to be one of our responses to new words. Honestly, I think another thing that people, when they complain about business language, they're voicing a bigger worry about the role of business in the world. And I think that when people worry that business jargon has come into our everyday lives and is taking over, that part of what they're expressing is a worry that the influence of business has become outsized. Those are all really interesting reasons. I wonder if there's also something about the culture of business that seems to inflate the use of jargon. Because I think a lot of people recognize that there is a point jargon, but at some point people just start using these words and using them all the time. And then they just sound like they don't even have to be using them, but it becomes this kind of either broish or inside or culture that seems conflated to some people. Yes, absolutely. And I've seen that when you look up business jargon on the web, you'll see these things, you know, 11 bits of jargon that make you sound stupid. And I think, I don't know that that's actually what people mean. I think they're using the word stupid just as a way to express disapproval. You're right. I think that business language, that business culture is a place where you see a lot of novelty in language. And there are lots of reasons for that including branding and innovation and that can be reflected in the language. We don't need as many synonyms in English as we have. And yet all those synonyms clearly do some kind of work for us. I myself do not like the word impactful, which people often see as business jargon. I don't like it. I actually know as a linguist, there is no good reason for me not to like it. It is a very well constructed word. It's just like hopeful and joyful, mindful, impactful. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. For some reason, I don't like it, but I will get over it. And in fact, just the other day, I was in the middle of saying something and I was saying that change is going to be very, and I realized I was headed straight for the word impactful. And I thought, oh no. So what did you say? I paused and I said significant. But I thought it's coming into my vocabulary too. So I think it is helpful to take that perspective and realize that some of these words will stop feeling jargony. Some of them will have their moment and sort of die out. That also happens to jargon. You know, just from an economic perspective, there's a lot of value locked up in language and certainly in business that's something to keep in mind when you're in a workplace. You want to understand these words and not necessarily think of them as bad things that you want to avoid or that people are making themselves look ridiculous because there is value kind of locked up behind that. On the other hand, managers probably don't want to have those barriers in the workplace. There's a lot of value if you're a manager to try to lower those barriers and use clear more universal language for everybody so that people are able to work with each other better. I think there are a couple of important points you're making there. The first is that when you enter a new workplace, you're certainly needing to learn the jargon, but you're also needing to learn other ways in which the language of that workplace works. Politeness conventions. How colloquial or formal is the language. With spoken and written, how do people send emails? Do people text? All of that is going to be different and is something we're learning as speakers and writers in addition to the jargon when we're in a workplace. I want to make sure that that is on the radar. Then the other thing that you're bringing up that I think is also critical is the question of audience and what kinds of language they are going to be familiar with or not familiar with or maybe even as importantly what language they're going to find off-putting. I think that that is something that all of us, there isn't going to be one answer to how do you use this language in any given situation. But as savvy speakers and writers, one of the things we should always be thinking about is who is the audience, what are their expectations, what kind of language is going to be persuasive, which were the accessible to this audience. You can imagine making different decisions in a business workplace depending on again how much is this an inside conversation versus a conversation with people outside the community. Then thinking about what might this language connote for people, what might their associations be with some of this jargon and then do I want to use that? If you as a manager or a communicator in a workplace can make all that more accessible for people, it just seems like number one, a friendly thing to do, but also just such a positive thing to do. And I think something to be aware of here, particularly for people who are working working in more international contexts is to realize that some of the metaphors and idioms that we can take for granted as American English speakers are not going to be transparent for speakers of other varieties of English or who have not grown up in American culture. And I'm thinking here, for example, of sports metaphors. And these will show up in business jargon and may not be accessible to people who have not grown up, for example, with baseball. Yeah, I know that touch base is something that drives British English business people crazy when they're working in US environments because it's just such a commonly used phrase and it just robs some of them the wrong way because it isn't clear what you're touching and it just feels funny. Right. And I think many American English speakers don't realize that touch base comes from baseball at this point. Right. We just know that that's what it is. It means to check in with someone. Now outside the box sounds like a term that could have a sports origin to it, but I don't know where it comes from. Well, so think outside the box. It often comes with think. That's what we're often doing outside the box. It took off in the 1980s. It's often associated with business speak. It seems to come from a nine dot test. Now to explain this, you need to imagine nine dots arranged in three rows and three columns. And the challenge is it's a puzzle in which you must connect the nine dots using only four straight lines. And if you imagine sort of, you drew four lines around the outside, it leaves the middle dot unconnected. The only way to connect the nine dots with four lines is to have the lines extend outside the box. Oh, interesting. And that is the speculation of where that comes from that not only do the lines extend outside the box, but you also have to think outside the structure of the box to be able to solve the puzzle. I kind of like that. I know. And the Oxford English Dictionary has think outside the box back to 1971. Again, it was the 80s when that really took off that we were all thinking outside boxes. And we think outside boxes much more than we think inside boxes. We don't think inside them very often. Right. Right. Unless you're in a cubicle. Right. That's interesting. I know that that's one of those ones that can be overused or it's just so common now it maybe has lost its meaning. Because if we're all outside the box, then you need to be outside outside the box to really be outside the box. That's absolutely right. And I think this is just true of language in general, which is that words can, their meanings can weaken over time. It's, and we have all kinds of examples of that. I mean, one word I'm thinking of is synergy. It's kind of a powerful word and it's a powerful concept. But it's just you heard so many CEOs, you know, justify mergers talking about synergies. And then these companies failed that it's a little bit of an eye roller of a word to use now, even though it's a strong idea. Well, so synergy, when I looked into the history of this word, it has a very interesting history. synergy originally comes from theology. When you first see it in the English language in the 1600s, it refers to cooperation between human will and divine grace. Wow, that's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah, so that's where it starts. And then by the 1800s, it refers to physiology, to coordinated action by muscles and organs. You'd have a synergy of muscles in a movement. You see it in pharmacology. In other words, synergy has been jargoned in a few different fields over the course of its history. And then by the 1950s, you get this broader meaning of any kind of interaction or cooperation that is dynamic in which people's, that's mutually reinforcing for people, you then start to see examples in business. There's a very interesting article in the Atlantic by Emma Green, where she is talking about business speak and she is tracing how some of these words and synergy is one of the ones she looks at show different philosophies in the evolution of business and the workplace and that synergy can be seen as part of a shift within the organizational culture model, where you were rather than looking at efficiency, you were thinking about human potential and the, so to speak, synergies that might be available to create that human potential in your organization. There are a couple more I want to ask you about quickly. And these are low hanging fruit or people talking about quick wins. And I also want to ask about move the needle, but let's start with low hanging fruit and quick wins. Like what comes to mind when you hear those? Well, I think low hanging fruit is a wonderful metaphor and in that way we could connect it to move the needle. So for all the ways in which people complain about jargon, I do want to notice and admire some of the metaphor that can happen that I think low hanging fruit is a pretty terrific way to express something that is within reach that we might be able to get quickly, a quick win, so to speak. Yeah, it's an image, right? It's a picture, which is powerful in language. Which is powerful. And so I don't want to lose that when people complain about business jargon and low hanging fruit is often on the list of the terms that people should avoid. And I think there's nothing, from my perspective, there's nothing wrong with an evocative metaphor that as you say, it can be memorable, it can be fun. And we're allowed to create and be playful with language. And in fact, it's one of the things that makes us human is that we love to play with language. The phrase low hanging fruit, when you look in the Oxford English Dictionary, they've got that back to 1972. Their first use is from manufacturing. By 1981, they've got an example from Fortune, the magazine. And in that quote, they have Intel started with what Nevin calls the low hanging fruit. And there they put it in quotation marks, which is a good sign that it's relatively new. And they say the low hanging fruit for him is departments with routine activities, such as accounts payable and personnel records that are relatively easy to streamline. So this one seems to really take off in the 1990s. And the 1990s is about when Quick Winds also takes off, Quick Winds being another sports metaphor. Well, Intel was pretty influential in business for a long time for a lot of reasons, but I didn't realize that they were, maybe it came from manufacturing first, but yeah. Yeah, and we have to remember that the Oxford English Dictionary just pulls out sample quotes from the material that they found. So it may be coincidental. But without that fortune article, you'd never know what would have happened. We don't. And move the needle is another metaphor. And here we can think of a speedometer or a noise meter where if something is, as a way to capture something that's having a big effect, if it's making a big noise, you'll get the needle will move dramatically if you put your foot on the gas and the car accelerates, then the needle will move. So it's again a metaphor for saying that you have made a difference, had a visible impact. With idioms, people will sometimes make the argument that idiom doesn't make sense to which my reaction is idioms don't have to make sense. That's not how idioms work. Idioms mean what idioms mean. And we don't parse them for their parts. So if move the needle means have a significant impact, that's what it means. Even long after people don't know what that needle was, what we're talking about. And I'll give you one of my favorite examples because this is an idiom that actually reversed or changed its meaning radically over time, which is to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps. Oh, yeah. And that's very start-up-e-now days too. Yeah. But let me tell you where this one comes from. It first shows up in American English in the middle of the 19th century. And when it comes into use, it means to try to do the impossible. Because in fact, if you have little bootstraps on the back of your boot and you try to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, it is not possible. Right. You cannot do it. And when you see these early quotes from the middle of the 19th century, they say to try to pull yourself up by your bootstraps is like putting yourself in a whale barrel and trying to wheel yourself around. It's absurd. That's funny. But we think of it as like a very positive thing now. Right. Well, now it means to succeed without help, to succeed through your own efforts. And the fact that you're going to be able to do it. that you can't actually, it's impossible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. It doesn't matter. The idiom means to succeed through your own means and efforts. And that's what it means. And you have just discovered why so many startups fail. I want to ask you about English as the international business language and where it's going. And I realize looking into the future of language is a lot harder than decoding its history. Is the reason that English is kind of the predominant international business language for many people's, the same reason it is, it became sort of an international language? Yes. I think we need to realize that languages become powerful international languages, not for linguistic reasons. It has nothing to do with the structure of English. It's about social, political, and economic power. And people will learn the language they need to learn to have access to that power. And at the moment, that is English. And at the moment, that is primarily British and American English. And there's been some competition between those two over time. I taught English in Austria at a business high school. And I felt that competition very, very strongly. And I had a similar experience. I taught English for a couple of years in Central China, and my students had learned British English. And they were very eager to learn American English because that had a particular kind of cultural capital for them. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I do want to back up. I just have to do this. I'm a historian of the English language. 500 years ago, in the 1500s or so, if you had said that English was going to be a world language. People would have laughed in your face. English was a language that was seen as crude and barbaric compared with French and Latin. And it was spoken on this island off the coast of Europe. That's what English was. And then, of course, through imperialism and colonization and all kinds of things, you see English spread. And then you have these powerful countries, including the United States, that are predominantly English speaking. So you've had English spread. And if there is a world language right now, it is English. And I can't say what the future holds. I can't know that. But I do feel I can say it's going to depend a lot on shifts in power, economic, social, political power. You could imagine a couple of different things happening. One would be that different varieties of English would rise and prestige. There are all kinds of world varieties of English that have arisen as English is spoken in countries where other languages are also being spoken and the English changes. So you could imagine the fortunes and futures of different varieties of English shifting over time. And I also just would never want to say that another language, I will sometimes hear people say, Chinese could never be a world language. Arabic could never be a world language. And I think life is long. People would have said English could never be a world language. So I always want to be very careful because it's a question of what language is going to give people access to particular kinds of power and capital. And people will learn that language. One fascinating thing about English is that the majority of English speakers are not around the world are not native speakers, which I think is the first time that's ever happened in world history, right? That more speakers of the language are actually non-native speakers. But it's absolutely true and I think a very important part of the future of English is that as you say, the vast majority of English speakers are speaking English alongside one, two, three, four other languages. And English is not the first of those languages. What do you make of some of these efforts to come up with a standardized, simpler form of English that could be used? And there are real cases where people point to the use of English to make deals in Singapore or India where reduced versions of English are used as the lingua franca. And there's a former IBM executive who's come up with what he calls "globish" and he argues that you can get most business done using just a small vocabulary of core English words. So I'm just curious what you think of, especially with technology to be able to translate things like that now, what you make of some of these efforts to have kind of a more accessible, common, global business language. It is certainly possible that you can create transactional versions of language that will achieve particular aims and that will be very specific to business transactions. I think efforts to create one version of a language at the moment we can think about English that the whole world is going to speak, and not to be successful because speakers are very hard to control. Yeah, right. And as I mentioned before, a big part of being a speaker and being human is that we're creative with language. And if you give, even if you give all of these people at one moment in time the same language and you disperse them all over the world, well, they're all going to use that language in creative ways in their corner of the world and it's going to change in different ways, which doesn't mean that there can't be shared versions or ways in which you figure out how to have transactional language that you can draw on. But the language itself, the language that people are communicating in in their daily lives, is going to change in every community. It's part of living languages change. It's what they do. It's part of being a human language. So I certainly can imagine we have created systems of communication that can cross cultures and that is very possible, but they won't be a full language. There'll be transactional communication system. That was linguist Ann Kersan speaking to HBR IDA Cast Host Kurt Nickish. Since they spoke in 2019 and published another book, it's called Says Hoop, a Kinder, Funner, Usage Guide for everyone who cares about words. HBR on leadership will be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation from Harvard Business Review. If this episode helped you, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow the show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. While you're there, consider leaving us a review. And when you're ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world's top business and management experts, find it all at hbr.org. This episode was produced by Mary Doe and me Amanda Kersy. Some leadership's team includes Maureen Hoek, Rob Eckhart, Erica Trexler, Ramsey Kabaz, Ann Bartholomew, and Nicole Smith. Music is by Coma Media.