Buzzword Illiteracy is the Key to Better Critical Thinking

I'm still over here trying to figure out how to become an "influencer" and what I have realized is that I may never get there because I'm just a simple guy with a simple outlook on the world and I don't use the necessary vocabulary. I don't document "touch points", I ask how something works. I don't do "deep dives" because it infers that there are "shallow dives", and that's how you hit your head. I don't "dig in" to anything, I just evaluate the facts until I figure out what the real problem is. I don't "reach out" to anyone, I contact them. The bottom line is that I may be a savant as a problem solver but I'm the village idiot when it comes to influencer-speak.

All of these buzzwords and jargon waste critical thinking time. Thinking about the correct business buzzword to use - and in the correct context - creates intellectual drag that affects the decision-making and problem-solving processes. How many times have you listened to someone during a meeting and silently played "Buzzword Bingo" with yourself. I once had a boss who said the word "perspective" so many times in a client meeting that he made me lose my actual perspective. I sort of forgot the problem we were trying to solve.

As I have tried to do in each of these articles, I will use a real-life scenario from a project that I have been working on recently. When asked why one group of employees with the same job description as another group of employees was not performing the same tasks, I was told that one group did "not have the same skillset inventory" as the other group. This is what followed:

Smith: "So is there an actual training inventory that an employee has to complete?"

Respondent: "No."

Smith: "So they haven't been cross-trained, is that it?"

Respondent: "No, they just don't need to have the same skillset inventory as the other group."

Smith: "Ok, thanks." (Thought bubble...what the ^#*& was that all about?)

That exchange wasted at least three minutes and forced me to infer the answer. Come to find out that one group was essentially getting OJT and eventually fleeting up to the other group. If the response to my question would have been "One group is used to train employees for the other group" I would have moved on. The overwhelming need to add "skillset inventory" into conversation made it less clear, not clearer.

If a big-time influencer posted "Stop with the damn buzzwords and say what you mean" it would probably get 10,000 responses filled with additional "perspective." Am I envious, maybe. But look at it this way, if I say it, you don't have to respond at all. You can have all that time back. That's my contribution to the science of critical thinking.

#thatisall