The Scapegoat Vocabulary

Agile, strategic, lean, tactical, systems approach, change management, and on and on they go.

As you know, business development, project management and general leadership has its own vocabulary. However, do these terms improve the way we function? From my experience, the effectiveness of this lingo is questionable.

While there is certainly a time and place for technical or conceptual language, at what point does it become a scapegoat? At what organization level do we need to "tone it down"? Sure, our meetings sound more professional, but did what you just say help anyone in the room (or on the phone) get the work done? My guess is probably not.

While we may be forced to continue utilizing more conceptual conversation as ways to promote efficiency, there is no casual substitute or shortcut to the formulation of a plan that stands on process or procedure. If you find yourself “stuck” within an initiative or project, I challenge you to look into the language that you are using in your meetings. Is work actually getting accomplished or does using phrases such as “we must begin to be strategic about our change management efforts” sound great. Okay....but now....what do you want us to actually do? Don't use a term if you can't back it up with an actual action.

Too often professional and educational systems alike force an emphasis on proprietary or otherwise specialized terminology. But where are the skills? Where is the critical thinking? Where is the ability to generate process or synthesize procedure?

Nobody wants to be the leader or team member that drones on, yet most of us do, within the terminology soup that we are serving by the bucketful.

I challenge us all to focus on our conversations, being thoughtful of when we use the all-too-common phrases. There is certainly nothing wrong with using the terms we learn, but let us use them purposely, with intention, with a foundation to stand on.

Let us challenge the scapegoat vocabulary that, while appearing professional, often accomplishes nothing.

Let us create measurable actions together.

Let us focus on functional skill execution.

The next time you are in a meeting and someone uses one of these terms, challenge it. Make sure it has meaning, has bench depth, has an explanation beyond the term, has purpose.

Should it not, begin to build a foundation through conscious process and procedure planning to actually accomplish the goal.