Think about the modern working world for a moment. Think about the different types of job there are. Now think about the value they give to society. Finally, see if you agree with what social anthropologist David Graeber has to say on the subject.
Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it’s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. … It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish.
The chances are that you agree with what he has to say. The chances are you’re in one of those very jobs that would not cause humanity to suffer if it no longer existed. In 2015 a YouGov survey found that 37% of British workers think their jobs are meaningless. The same survey discovered that 33% of workers do not find the work they do fulfilling.
David Graeber theorises that the reason there are so many meaningless jobs is because much manual labour has been eliminated by automation. But instead of freeing us up to enjoy more leisure time, we have seen the expansion of the administration and service sector and sectors designed to support those sectors.
All this makes for saddening reading. Lots of questions arise about how we have ended up in a situation like this. But I’d like to explore one specific result of the situation and what we can do about it.
The rise of business-speak
What is it? It’s business-speak — the over-formal language, jargon and buzz phrases that surround so many of us in our working worlds. It’s what’s sometimes referred to as ‘bullshit’. Here’s one example:
Your enquiry about the use of the entrance area at the library for the purpose of displaying posters and leaflets about Welfare and Supplementary Benefit rights, gives rise to the question of the provenance and authoritativeness of the material to be displayed. Posters and leaflets issued by the Central Office of Information, the Department of Health and Social Security and other authoritative bodies are usually displayed in libraries, but items of a disputatious or polemic kind, whilst not necessarily excluded, are considered individually.
For Andre Spicer, Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Cass Business School, City University of London, there’s a clear connection between a meaningless job and the use of language like this:
[T]his kind of discourse is particularly prevalent in immaterial contexts that lack a clear sense of social purpose or value. In order to stave off this sense of purposelessness, many organisational members turn to the dark art of bullshit.
‘Bullshit’ language is a problem that’s very familiar to us. A 2013 survey by the Institute of Leadership and Management found that almost a quarter of UK workers considered jargon a pointless irritation. And a 2017 survey found that 88% of us pretend to understand office jargon while having no idea what it means. Andre Spicer says that language like this has ‘distinctly darker consequences: primary tasks are crowded out, valued occupational identities are compromised and stakeholder trust is undermined. Ultimately, bullshit leaves us with organisations that may be appealing on the surface but are distinctly brittle.”
The traditional solution to avoiding business-speak
Organisations know the use of business-speak is a problem. To try to solve it, many have style guides that encourage the use of plain English. Here’s the UK Government’s Digital Agency’s guidance, for example:
Do not use formal or long words when easy or short ones will do. Use ‘buy’ instead of ‘purchase’, ‘help’ instead of ‘assist’, and ‘about’ instead of ‘approximately’.
We also lose trust from people if we write government ‘buzzwords’ and jargon. Often, these words are too general and vague and can lead to misinterpretation or empty, meaningless text. We can do without these words.
And here’s how successful this guidance has been. A study in 2016 found that 92% of UK Government agency websites don’t meet readability standards. They also found that only two of 26 central government agencies were up to scratch regarding readability, and no government websites met the passive language target.
I would argue that the failure of style guides — government or otherwise — to work is hardly surprising. Plain English can sound ‘naked’ and stripped down. If you’re feeling insecure about your role, this is a problem.
Think back to the example above about displaying a poster (“Your enquiry about the use of the entrance area at the library for the purpose of displaying posters and leaflets about Welfare and Supplementary Benefit rights…”)
The Plain English Campaign ‘translates’ this as:
Thank you for your letter asking for permission to put up posters in the library. Before we can give you an answer we will need to see a copy of the posters to make sure they won’t offend anyone.
That all makes it sound very easy and straightforward, doesn’t it? As a recipient, you’d much rather receive the translation rather the original. It makes it very clear what you need to do in a way the original doesn’t.
But put yourself in the shoes of the writer for a moment. If you’re feeling insecure about your role or consider it to be meaningless, the last thing you want to do is risk the loss of face involved in revealing this meaningless to someone else. And when you write in plain English that’s exactly what it feels like you’re doing. On the other hand, when you dress it up in fancy language, your role has a lot more status and that’s very comforting. Vyvyan Evans, Ph.D., an expert in language, communication and mind, writes:
[T]he way in which we present our public selves is conveyed, in large part, through language. The nature of the language we choose to use signals information about our attitudes towards others, ourselves and the situations in which we find ourselves.
What this means is that guidelines around writing plainly are never going to gain much traction in the majority of organisations because they require more honesty and transparency than many of us would be comfortable having.
Which begs the question, what can we do to stop using business-speak in our working world?
Eliminating business-speak involves a cultural shift
Simon Sinek’s Start with Why is central to a lot of marketing thinking at the moment thanks to its simple statement: “people don’t buy WHAT you do they buy WHY you do it.” It’s fuelled an explosion in storytelling in marketing — share why you’re doing what you do, the theory goes, and people will feel your passion and feel passion for your business in return. And when you have passionate customers you have loyal customers who will stick with you through thick and thin, unswayed by fashion or competitors. Sinek frequently uses the example of Apple and the number of users who wouldn’t consider any other brand.
But, as Sinek makes clear, the WHY is just as important for your internal audience — your staff and employees — as your customers. Because when your team understands WHY they’re doing what they’re doing — and buy into that why — they’ll be more passionate about it.
The truth is, almost every person on the planet is passionate about something, we are just not all passionate about the same things. Starting with WHY when hiring dramatically increases your ability to attract those who are passionate for what you believe. Simply hiring people with a solid resume or great work ethic does not guarantee success. The best engineer at Apple, for example, would likely be miserable if he worked at Microsoft. Likewise, the best engineer at Microsoft would probably not thrive at Apple. Both are highly experienced and work hard. Both may come highly recommended. However, each engineer does not fit the culture of the other’s company.
Simon Sinek, Start with Why, Penguin, 2011, page 93
We see this in action on a smaller scale every day. When I was in management and needed to ask a junior member of the team to fulfil a tedious task — envelope stuffing, say — I always made sure they understood this task in the bigger picture and how their work, however dull, would contribute to an end result. It gave their work a purpose and — I hoped — would relieve the tedium.
It is widely recognised that there is a direct link between levels of employee engagement and productivity and performance. Yet a 2017 survey by Deloitte found that just 24% of organisations think they are excellent at aligning employees and personal goals with corporate purpose, which shows just how far we have to go in harnessing what the power of why has to offer.
So how do we engage employees? The MacLeod Review, a UK government sponsored review of the benefits and drivers of employee engagement, concluded that the first of the four ‘enablers’ of employee engagement was leadership that gives a ‘strong strategic narrative about the organisation, where it’s come from and where it’s going’. In other words, start with why.
But I believe that sharing an organisation’s wider purpose with its employees has another benefit too. When they have more confidence in their own purpose and role in the bigger picture they will be more willing to use plain language when talking about it because they don’t feel they have anything to hide.
Rachel Savage is a brand storyteller who runs Brand New Story, which works with businesses to uncover their brand story and define their why. Here are the benefits she says will follow:
Define your common purpose: that will unite, inspire and motivate everyone in your organisation
Create a more human brand identity that enjoys an emotional connection with people
Establish who you are, what you offer, to whom and why
Drop the BS (business speak)
Place your target audience(s) — both internal and external communications — at the heart of your story and its communications
Embody a clear and consistent tone of voice for all your marketing and communications
Produce key messages that will make your internal and external customers feel as though they were written just for them
Be different.
Note how many of these relate to communication. Note in particular how it gives you the ability to ‘drop the BS’.
An anecdote from copywriter Bob Bly takes all this from the big picture to a personal experience that illustrates the point perfectly:
“Years ago, in a brochure describing a material handling system, I wrote that the equipment dumped the material from a storage silo into a bin. The product manager crossed out “dumped” and changed it to “gravimetrically conveyed.” When his boss read this, he asked, puzzled, “What’s a gravimetric conveyor?”
The lowly employee — a long way down the hierarchy of the organisation, presumably feeling their job lacked worth, felt the need to use ‘fancy’ language. The boss, with much more authority and, presumably, a greater sense of worth, had no difficulty with using the simpler language.
Think too about the number of CEOs and chairs you’ve heard speak plainly and simply — think Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs. They have confidence in the value they and their organisations have to offer and this is reflected in the language they use.
Now think about the person in a call centre who is unable or unwilling to deviate from the script or express themselves as a human being when they speak to you. What does that say about their confidence in their role and purpose?
No easy way out
There is no doubt that putting together a list of style guidelines is a quick fix. Unfortunately, like many quick fixes it’s unlikely to work in the long term. If you want to teach people to write in plain English you have to give them confidence. And it’s confidence that isn’t found in a list of grammar rules and words to avoid. Rather, it’s the confidence that comes when you have a sense of purpose about your role and the role of the organisation you’re working for. It’s confidence that means you have nothing to hide.
Such confidence will take time to uncover and will involve a great deal of soul searching about what you do and why you do it. But ultimately, it will make an immeasurable difference to every element of your business from employee motivation and retention to delivering compelling marketing messages that reveal what sets you apart from every other organisation that does what you do.
