Image: Pavel Danilyuk/Pexels Once upon a time, I brought my then-9-year-old daughter to hang out in my office cubicle while her mom had an appointment. At one point, her attention was caught by a beeping Mailmobile—a large robotic cart that moved office mail through the facility, guided by a magnetic strip under tile and carpet. My daughter, raised on the droids of Star Wars, tried desperately to engage the passing Mailmobile in conversation—alas, to no avail (though to great amusement on my part).
While the humble Mailmobile has gone the way of the Pony Express—although not as long ago as you think—office automation is no fading fad. These days it’s all about artificial intelligence (AI), computer systems designed to mimic human reasoning, decision-making and creativity.
While AI is artificial by definition, it pretends to be alive, sometimes quite effectively. Indeed, my daughter would have much greater success chatting with ChatGPT than with a Mailmobile. When prompted, AI can come up lots of ideas—some good, others not so much. Just like people do. Which brings us to the actual topic of this blog.
One thing that’s made my eyeballs ache throughout my career is the human capacity to create new words describing old (and usually common sense) ideas. We call this jargon.
Communicators often decry jargon. But because we work in a jargony world with jargony people, we find ourselves circling back to it. (See what I did there?) We don’t want to seem out of the loop with our business peers. (Yes, I did it there, too.) And so we leverage every opp--
(*Sound of me slapping my face*)
Anyway….
I had an idle moment, so I turned to a couple of AI platforms and asked each to come up with some new jargon, complete with definitions.
So, my fellow communicators, behold the creativity of the 1’s and 0’s! Bask in the aura of these new terms! Consider how you can use them casually at your next C-suite meeting!
(Or, like me, smile at them and resolve to keep jargon out of clear, thoughtful, effective communication.)
Frictionless Alignment — When everyone in a meeting nods along without actually agreeing on anything.
Cross-Functional Osmosis — The optimistic belief that teams will naturally absorb each other's knowledge simply by sitting near each other or being on the same Slack channel.
Ideation Runway — The amount of time allotted to brainstorm before someone from Finance shuts it down.
Bandwidth Harmonization — Aligning everyone’s workload so no one is overloaded or underutilized. This usually involves a meeting that, ironically, consumes everyone’s bandwidth.
Insight Aeration — “Fluffing up” raw data with some jargony language and a few tasteful charts so it feels more actionable.
Culture Looping — Believing that organizational values are best reinforced by adding them to business cards, Powerpoint footers, and the wall behind bathroom urinals.
Execution Elasticity — The ability of a team to stretch or compress its workflow to meet shifting deadlines without snapping (or snapping at one another).
Value Driftproofing — A strategic process for ensuring that a project’s original purpose doesn’t get lost after 12 rounds of stakeholder feedback. (Uncomfortable truth: It will anyway.)
Synergetic Uplift — The vague, unmeasurable boost in productivity that leadership claims will result from any reorganization, new initiative, or a new idea that’s just another bit of jargon.
As the great Sgt. Esterhaus once said: Let's be careful out there….
While the humble Mailmobile has gone the way of the Pony Express—although not as long ago as you think—office automation is no fading fad. These days it’s all about artificial intelligence (AI), computer systems designed to mimic human reasoning, decision-making and creativity.
While AI is artificial by definition, it pretends to be alive, sometimes quite effectively. Indeed, my daughter would have much greater success chatting with ChatGPT than with a Mailmobile. When prompted, AI can come up lots of ideas—some good, others not so much. Just like people do. Which brings us to the actual topic of this blog.
One thing that’s made my eyeballs ache throughout my career is the human capacity to create new words describing old (and usually common sense) ideas. We call this jargon.
Communicators often decry jargon. But because we work in a jargony world with jargony people, we find ourselves circling back to it. (See what I did there?) We don’t want to seem out of the loop with our business peers. (Yes, I did it there, too.) And so we leverage every opp--
(*Sound of me slapping my face*)
Anyway….
I had an idle moment, so I turned to a couple of AI platforms and asked each to come up with some new jargon, complete with definitions.
So, my fellow communicators, behold the creativity of the 1’s and 0’s! Bask in the aura of these new terms! Consider how you can use them casually at your next C-suite meeting!
(Or, like me, smile at them and resolve to keep jargon out of clear, thoughtful, effective communication.)
Frictionless Alignment — When everyone in a meeting nods along without actually agreeing on anything.
Cross-Functional Osmosis — The optimistic belief that teams will naturally absorb each other's knowledge simply by sitting near each other or being on the same Slack channel.
Ideation Runway — The amount of time allotted to brainstorm before someone from Finance shuts it down.
Bandwidth Harmonization — Aligning everyone’s workload so no one is overloaded or underutilized. This usually involves a meeting that, ironically, consumes everyone’s bandwidth.
Insight Aeration — “Fluffing up” raw data with some jargony language and a few tasteful charts so it feels more actionable.
Culture Looping — Believing that organizational values are best reinforced by adding them to business cards, Powerpoint footers, and the wall behind bathroom urinals.
Execution Elasticity — The ability of a team to stretch or compress its workflow to meet shifting deadlines without snapping (or snapping at one another).
Value Driftproofing — A strategic process for ensuring that a project’s original purpose doesn’t get lost after 12 rounds of stakeholder feedback. (Uncomfortable truth: It will anyway.)
Synergetic Uplift — The vague, unmeasurable boost in productivity that leadership claims will result from any reorganization, new initiative, or a new idea that’s just another bit of jargon.
As the great Sgt. Esterhaus once said: Let's be careful out there….
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