Foggify

VP of Commercial Training: "I want you to give me a workshop title that no one will possibly understand, but which will sound really important."

A.I. ChatJARGON Engine: "Sure!"

Hahahaha! Crazy, right? Except the above word salad was 100% human generated.

You've seen this kind of stuff a thousand times, right? It's a form of communication malpractice.

Earlier this week, I was trying to think of the right word that would be the opposite of "clarify." I decided to make one up: "foggify."

To clarify is to use words to explain the meaning of ideas in a brain-friendly way.

Here's how I'll define foggify - using words to create confusion and obscurity. And the more words, the better (to maximize perplexity).

The business world is jam-packed with foggifiers, who compose brand statements, job descriptions, emails, and websites with so many vague and ambiguous words that clear meaning is hopelessly obscured. So many words, but so little communication!

And it's everywhere. My wife, a teacher, just forwarded me this gem, from Public Consulting Group:

Our Education team offers consulting services and technology solutions to help schools, school districts, and state education agencies/ministries of education promote student success, improve programs and processes, and optimize financial resources.

Translation...pay us a bunch of money and we'll somehow make some buzzwordy things better? Promote, improve, optimize, and 'solutions' are fog words that sound great but are open to endless interpretation.

In my Clarity workshops, we show how brevity, specificity, distillation (getting to the point), and other brain-friendly tactics make people effective communicators. We won't charge you to implement leverageable solutions to promote employee success, holistically improve organizational programs, and optimize synergistic process excellence toward measurable results.

Instead, we'll help you become clear.