S1E7: Business Lingo, Ambiguity, Exclusion, and Cults

Show Notes

Summary

In this episode of The Intentional Organization Podcast, Mathias Meyer and Sara Hicks explore business lingo, ambiguity, and exclusion through a chapter that didn't make it into their book. Mathias opens with the evolution of DevOps from a collaborative way of working into a marketing label, before the conversation takes an unexpected turn: what businesses and cults can have in common. Without equating every business with a cult, they examine insider vocabulary, group identity, and the social pressure to belong.

From "synergies" and "let's double click on that" to "alignment," "democratizing," and entire calendars full of acronyms, the hosts trade their least favorite phrases and explore what gets lost behind them. Familiar words can give the impression of agreement while everyone holds a different understanding. Frameworks like Agile, OKRs, and Radical Candor need concrete meaning within a company, and calling something a "living document" can become a way to avoid committing to a decision.

They discuss the costs of unclear communication, the cultural assumptions behind military and sports metaphors, and why asking for clarification can feel risky. The practical advice is straightforward: make it safe to ask what a phrase means, spell out the actions and decisions behind it, and regularly audit the terminology your organization uses. The episode closes with Sara's beach visits and enjoyment of the book, "The Correspondent," and Mathias's recommendation of The Rest Is Science podcast.

Keywords

business jargon, clear communication, leadership, ambiguity, workplace culture, inclusion, belonging, decision making, acronyms, cults, shared understanding, terminology audit

Takeaways

• Shared vocabulary doesn't guarantee shared understanding. Ask people to explain what a term or project means in concrete terms, and notice where their answers differ.

• Insider language can create belonging for established employees while making newcomers feel excluded. Acronyms and company-specific references add work for anyone trying to understand the conversation.

• The comparison with cults centers on shared vocabulary, group identity, and an us-versus-them mentality. These patterns are worth examining in a company without assuming every business is a cult.

• Buzzwords can hide missing decisions. Replacing "alignment" or "product-led growth" with specific actions requires leaders to clarify what they actually want the organization to do.

• Adopting a named framework isn't enough. Explain which parts fit your organization and what behaviors you expect, rather than assuming everyone interprets the label in the same way.

• Give decisions an owner and a review point. Instead of simply calling a roadmap a "living document," state what you know, what you're assuming, what you're committing to, and when you'll revisit it.

• Leaders can make clarification safer by explicitly inviting their teams to question jargon and by asking those questions themselves.

• Military and sports metaphors carry cultural assumptions. Consider how those phrases land with people from different backgrounds and whether clearer wording would help.

• Run a terminology audit: review acronyms, internal stories, and recurring phrases, clarify what's useful, and retire what has lost its meaning as the company has grown.

• Clear communication takes time and thought. A few minutes spent replacing a vague phrase with a concrete explanation can save a team from working toward different outcomes.

Chapters

00:00 The Evolution of DevOps, Business Value, and Jargon

03:51 Business Lingo, Ambiguity, and Exclusion

04:31 Business Lingo and the Cult Comparison

10:53 Buzzwords Worth Retiring

23:26 When Business Language Becomes War

28:34 Why Decisions Get Stuck

34:23 Jargon, Belonging, and Exclusion

46:09 The Real Cost of Unclear Language

48:46 Military and Sports Metaphors

52:12 Clarity Is Not Oversensitivity

54:57 A Terminology Audit for Leaders

58:05 Weekly Recommendations

Transcript

Mathias Meyer (00:01) In the earlier years of my career, when I was still working as a software engineer, I was used to not only building the software, but also for ensuring that it gets deployed to production and that it hums along smoothly as it was serving customers. At that time, I was in charge of development and operation. It was a normal mode of working for me. Around the same time, the idea of DevOps emerged.

Two departments traditionally walled off from each other, working together in unison rather than separate. Meaning development and operations. Solve problems together rather than point fingers. Serve the customer rather than put blame somewhere else. Take responsibility together, all in the name of creating and maintaining business value.

I cringed a little bit when I wrote those last two words. Business value. Inevitably, companies jumped on the term, even though it had no commercial meaning or intent. Everyone in their product was now DevOps. Just like it happened before with Scrum, Agile, and since then with OKRs, Crypto, Product Market Fit, Zero to One.

Today, everything's AI, or AI first, or agendic, or what have you. You've seen the terms, you've heard them being used.

Companies co-opting something is part of the hype cycle. Everyone wants to be part of the group, not miss out on the market, and sound like they know what they're talking about. What happens on the on a macro level across entire industries also happens within companies on the micro level. Words are co opted and a attributed meaning that everyone is supposed to understand intuitively.

We sound cutting edge when we talk about how our business is AI first. We can sell better when we talk about how our product is DevOps. We can hire internationally when we talk about being remote first. On the inside, words like alignment, shareholder value, strategy, tactics, synergies, living documents, customer first are being used constantly.

Like everyone intuitively knows what that means. But that's the beauty of these words. You can just assume everyone does, and most folks will just nod along.

Business lingo unfortunately has a tendency to create more conflict than it solves anything. I try to teach my clients that. Clear language wins out over buzzwords any day, especially when you're talking to a team of ten, a hundred, or thousands of people. But clear language requires clear thinking, clear decisions, and a clear direction. And sometimes it's those very things that are missing.

Which is why hand wavy business lingo is so comforting to use. You don't have to decide on anything. In this episode, Sara and I share our gripes with the over and also the undefined use of business lingo, the problems it can create, and also what businesses have in common with cults.

Mathias Meyer (03:51) So today we're talking about business lingo, ambiguity in language and communication, about jargon, the exclusion in it, and also in a surprising twist, we might also talking about cults. Speaking from our book, like this is the chapter that could have been, or that we at least wrote, but didn't include in the final version.

I went back to read it and I mean, it is short. Initially we had an idea to put intermission chapters

Sara Hicks (04:21) you

Mathias Meyer (04:22) into the book that are shorter. doing the research for today. I

Sara Hicks (04:26) .

Mathias Meyer (04:27) had an incredibly good time. This was such a fascinating topic

Sara Hicks (04:33) Thank you.

Mathias Meyer (04:31) it's in an odd way, it's a topic that is dear to my heart. And it is in some ways horrifying and repels

me at the same time. But before we go in there, I have a question for you, Sara What do businesses and cults have in common?

Sara Hicks (04:51) Ooh, this feels like a trick question. Okay, what do?

Mathias Meyer (04:53) It is not.

Sara Hicks (04:57) they're exclusionary.

Mathias Meyer (04:59) Uh-huh, yes, exactly.

Sara Hicks (05:03) own vocabulary, their own shared understanding of what meaning is, what meaning is to them.

Mathias Meyer (05:14) That's right.

Sara Hicks (05:16) Let's see, what else do they have in common? They all have a notion of shareholder value, meaning the business for sure.

Mathias Meyer (05:23) interesting.

Sara Hicks (05:24) Yeah, the cult has a clear shareholder. Yeah, yeah. It's often just

Mathias Meyer (05:30) It's just one, but yes, yes, agreed.

Sara Hicks (05:33) one and odd, but sometimes that's the same in biz.

Mathias Meyer (05:39) Uh-huh.

Sara Hicks (05:42) What am I missing? Yeah, there are some good ones.

Mathias Meyer (05:44) this, mean, again, like this isn't to say like every business is the same as a cult, right? I think just wanna preempt that. But I mean, if you look at even, say, some companies build an identity around, for the people working at the company, right? Some of that can just be

Sara Hicks (06:04) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (06:05) individuals are not referred to as employees or people working there, but for example,

Google site, new people working there are referred to, or at least used to be referred to as nooglers and were also wearing this silly hat, which, you know, it's a thing in its own right. Like in my company, in a former company of mine, Trevis CI, we used to call people builders, and back then I saw, you know, some value in having something to refer.

to the team of the group of people that was working to us, but in an odd sense, it also dehumanizes them, which again,

Sara Hicks (06:42) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (06:50) brings us back to cults where that's the whole point, right? Dehumanize people as much as possible so that they are so closely attached to the cult as a social entity and that we're

Sara Hicks (07:03) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (07:04) leaving the cult is,

you know, social exclusion,

Sara Hicks (07:08) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (07:09) because along the way in that cult, they foster a notion of you need to get rid of all of the social contacts you have to the outside world, and we are the only thing that you're allowed to talk to. So, leaving a cult comes with a social punishment. And

Sara Hicks (07:29) That's a good one. right.

Mathias Meyer (07:31) again, it's not the same...

with all businesses, but again, like there is, you know.

Sara Hicks (07:38) We've certainly been in, I've certainly been in businesses where a lot of this resonates. That us versus them mentality, the inside versus outside, leaving the business, you leave the definitely social consequences once removed from an organization or you leave voluntarily or involuntarily. It's, yeah.

Mathias Meyer (08:00) Yeah, I went through a rabbit hole when it comes to cults like a couple of months ago when my daughter was researching this topic for a school class. And you you mentioned jargon, which is really maybe the most relevant thing that both of them have in common. Like if you look at, organizations like say, Scientology has a

a big vocabulary that is only known to people working there, right? There are books this vocabulary and only if you are in, do you know what they mean. And there's not many of these don't make any sense. Like to whether you're on the outside or on the inside, but when you're in the inside, at least you understand the meaning is internally, right? But the jargon part

Sara Hicks (08:49) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (08:50) is very...

And then, mean, there's more stuff like where, which is not necessarily related to today, where, know, cults and specifically create an us versus them mentality, which is certainly a thing I've seen many times over in the startup world. as you mentioned, some of them are, you know, built around the focus on a single individual in some ways, you know, this applies to,

capital and founders as well, where there's a, not a cult around the personality, but there's a lot of weight that is attributed to an individual person. I know, like, I'm not...

Sara Hicks (09:25) Look at some of

the, mean some of the, we don't even have to name them, some of the biggest companies in the world today, we all

Mathias Meyer (09:30) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (09:31) can go back to naming the, know, in some cases it's the founder who's still there or, chief executive who's the front person, the external facing person as

Mathias Meyer (09:43) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (09:45) that as that person, yeah.

Mathias Meyer (09:48) Yeah, there are many, many sort of examples of having the us versus them mentality, an internal jargon where, mean, I'm not gonna name names, but several of these have actually had TV shows made about them, and I will just leave it at that.

Sara Hicks (10:08) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (10:12) Anyway, to me, this is a really an odd and unexpected incursion, but I do think about this a lot. Like, cults are, a potentially destructive social construct. And business

Sara Hicks (10:24) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (10:25) can be that too. But I mean, the whole purpose of our conversation today is to save as many people, founders, executives, whatnot from

actually getting there. So, if we shift back to business jargon, business language, business lingo, which term or phrase actually sends shivers down your spine and not in the good way, creates like an instant negative reaction for you?

Sara Hicks (10:53) Oh boy. I'm gonna give a couple to this one. And I just wanna go back to something you said up front, which is like, I don't know, maybe this is a supplemental chapter that we just add as a free download because it's just such a fun, just reading through this notes and thinking about this conversation today, I was like, oh yeah, we need to add a chapter in the second printing. Anyway, okay,

Mathias Meyer (11:17) Mm-mm. Agreed.

Sara Hicks (11:19) since, okay.

The word synergies, synergies,

really, that's one that, yeah, do not like, it's just, it's, it's so odd. or synergistic or it's just any of those. yeah. Okay. So there's that one, the phrase that came to my mind that really, I kind of makes me laugh is let's double click on that.

Mathias Meyer (11:45) god.

Sara Hicks (11:47) You know, which is basically like, can you explain that more? Can you can you give me a little more detail? And I don't know why that one took off like it seemed like

Mathias Meyer (11:54) Bye.

Sara Hicks (11:55) overnight, everyone was like, in a meeting. Hey, let's double click on that or let's and it's funny because now we tap more than we click. So it's not even really like. But it does drive me,

Mathias Meyer (12:07) Interesting.

Sara Hicks (12:09) you know, and there's all these ones like I'll be in a meeting and be like.

My former boss used to say regularly like, we're not trying to boil the ocean.

Yeah, it's like, what are you trying to mean there? Like we're not let's not expand scope. Let's not, you know, we let's let's focus. I don't know. There's just don't get me started, Mathias Like there's so many. There's so many. I will say. I want to just add

Mathias Meyer (12:33) If every, if, you will see.

Sara Hicks (12:35) one one more thing, which isn't really jargon, but it's it's companies that use acronyms for everything.

Mathias Meyer (12:43) yeah.

Sara Hicks (12:43) And I think it's

just as hostile and just as weird. And I won't name the company, but a company I was involved with. When I joined, remember meeting with the CEO in the first few weeks of my joining, kind of an onboarding type conversation, welcome to the team type conversation. And I just remember saying

Mathias Meyer (13:05) Uh-huh.

Sara Hicks (13:05) something like,

like how overwhelming it was. I even said, I think I said something like it feels kind of hostile. It's so hard to

Mathias Meyer (13:16) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (13:16) know what people are talking about in these meetings because they're just flying acronyms left and right. And then there's glossaries that people have created in the Wiki to give you the Bible of what these things mean. But then there's multiple

Mathias Meyer (13:31) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (13:31) glossaries because multiple people have created them.

Mathias Meyer (13:36) And man, different teams have different acronyms probably.

Sara Hicks (13:36) I would be invited to meet different teams,

different acronyms, and some of them are so close to each other, you're like, okay, which one does that mean? And I'd get invited to meetings where the subject line was just the acronym, and I'd like, I'd get to the meeting and be like, what is this? Anyway, I am so sorry to bring up the acronyms, but I, and I know it's.

Mathias Meyer (13:52) I've seen that too. Yes. Yeah, I get it. No, no. I mean, this is what we're

here for.

Sara Hicks (14:00) part of that community, it's part of belonging and everyone feels like they're in the

Mathias Meyer (14:04) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (14:04) know because of these acronyms. It's such a learning curve for newer

Mathias Meyer (14:09) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (14:11) people coming into the team and it's just a cognitive tax for everyone. So I don't know.

Mathias Meyer (14:16) Yeah, and in an odd way

people just have to, people just feel like they have to pretend like they understand because otherwise

Sara Hicks (14:25) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (14:25) they wouldn't feel like they belong.

Sara Hicks (14:28) Yeah, yeah. I remember the first meeting I got invited to, this is a post in acquisition. You know, we are joining a new company, a new team, and first meeting on my calendar, well, it's a 7 a.m. my time meeting, which is, I'm an early bird, but it's, you know, it's not my favorite to be in regular

Mathias Meyer (14:49) huh.

Sara Hicks (14:50) 7 a.m. And this is now a weekly meeting, and it was an acronym.

subject line. had no idea, you know, and I just thought like, wow, this is not a good start. Not a good start, people.

Mathias Meyer (15:02) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sara Hicks (15:04) Anyway, yeah, so acronyms. Let's double click on that and synergies. There's your answer.

Mathias Meyer (15:11) I mean, that was more than I expected, to be honest. even just, it is like we all have our pet peeves and I think these business lingo is a particular pet peeve of mine. And I agree on double click. Like you could just say, say more, or you could also say, go on. Or I would like to know, I would like to hear more about that, but no.

Sara Hicks (15:37) Yeah, it gets

like it is like, hey, can you mention this about this? Can we talk a little bit more about that? Like, like, just make it obvious, people make it obvious anyway. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (15:48) or

you sidebar it. Right? You can do that.

Sara Hicks (15:52) Or parking lot it or can you put that

Mathias Meyer (15:54) You parking lot it

Sara Hicks (15:55) and then from there you pressure test it.

Mathias Meyer (16:00) I feel, don't feel like, and we will. I don't feel like boiling

Sara Hicks (16:00) We could go on for hours, people. We could go on for hours here.

Mathias Meyer (16:05) the ocean. I feel this is boiling my blood. I wonder if like, if all businesses would actually boil the ocean. Would the ocean actually boil? sidebar that for later.

Sara Hicks (16:15) It's a good

riddle. It's a good riddle.

Mathias Meyer (16:18) I mean, for me, it's the simple things. have some reactions, I don't want to say strong reactions, to the word alignment, because it's it's thrown around as a word, just to describe an ideal state, where, for example, it could just mean

understand this problem in the same way and we agree that the solution is the thing that is right in front of us. But that's a lot of words, right? So you can just say alignment and then you can also like toss it at an entire organization or at the relationship between say company leadership and the rest of the company or you talk about a group of people. It's just, to me,

Sara Hicks (16:44) Okay.

Mathias Meyer (17:04) Like it's one of those words, my ears prick whenever it comes up and I always ask for clarification. Because

Sara Hicks (17:10) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (17:11) it's just used a lot, just like synergies.

Sara Hicks (17:16) It's used a lot. I think it's become this word that like is very aspirational. People like revolutionize or democratize. It's one of those words where it's like we need to get to alignment, this state. you're like, okay,

What are we trying to understand together? Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (17:34) Yeah, yeah, it's funny

that you mentioned democratize. Like it's my other word that I have on this particular point where you know, there was a phase when we, when the, how you pitched your startup in one sentence was my company is like X for Y where the X could be like Uber for vegetables or like Airbnb for horseback riding.

Like those things.

a phase where everybody talked about democratizing, which meant in some way they were looking for, again, it's a very abstract word and sounds great. Like who wouldn't, you know, we're all striving, I mean, at least in an ideal world, maybe not in the current geopolitical climate,

Sara Hicks (18:16) So.

Mathias Meyer (18:18) but ideally, you know, we all appreciate democracy.

But in an odd way, like startups who talk about democratizing are actually talking about something else. Like they're talking about a marketplace where they have control. And I don't

Sara Hicks (18:33) Right.

Mathias Meyer (18:34) mind that, right? It's just like, just say that, right? Because then people actually know what they're building towards. It's like,

Sara Hicks (18:42) Right.

Mathias Meyer (18:43) we wanna have a marketplace, we wanna keep as many people on our platform as possible, and we're gonna make some money in the process. Like this is...

Sara Hicks (18:50) Thank you.

Mathias Meyer (18:51) Not a hard thing to actually spell out. In some way democratizing implies some level of fuzzy feelings that is not actually what the outcome is going to be. Because there is

Sara Hicks (19:04) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (19:04) some, there might be some lock-in at the end, right? And where people are reliant on your platform, there has to be, yeah.

Sara Hicks (19:10) There has to be place where you have to make money.

have to charge some money for something or you have to make it offering. I know I fell into this trap around democratize.

Mathias Meyer (19:20) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (19:21) I built, as you know, we together ran a large open source commerce platform and I really like, I don't know, I just felt like open source. It's freely available. Anyone can download it.

We're democratizing commerce. know, it just felt like I get that. I get the trap of wanting to have this utopian democratizing kind of thing. And then, yeah, we needed to make money. we needed to, build on a platform that we could make a business off of. So.

Mathias Meyer (19:52) Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I'm not blaming anybody. When this comes up, you know, in, when I work with clients or it came up like at a strategy planning workshop where somebody threw it around and it's like, just say what that actually means and then cross out the word. And some of it is, you know, maybe not some of it is jargony. Other parts is maybe philosophizing around, you know, startup terminology and intentions behind it, but

maybe it's a gray area or maybe there's just a lot of overlap. Anyway,

Sara Hicks (20:23) Right.

Mathias Meyer (20:26) I mean, there's so many more words.

let's, let's go through a few just for the heck of it and see if

Sara Hicks (20:33) We should.

Mathias Meyer (20:33) our, if our listeners get

any responses like we do with, with a couple of words that we, we already mentioned. Okay.

Sara Hicks (20:43) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (20:44) Strategy.

Sara Hicks (20:47) Way overused. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (20:49) Uh-huh.

next one. There's a list, Sara. There's a long list.

Sara Hicks (20:53) okay. we going one? We trading tactics. Yes, tactics. Yes.

Mathias Meyer (20:57) Work tactics, execution.

Sara Hicks (21:00) impact. impact. That one. That one's used

Mathias Meyer (21:03) Mmmmm

Sara Hicks (21:03) as both a noun and a verb and it drives me crazy.

Mathias Meyer (21:08) Innovation.

Sara Hicks (21:09) yes. Growth. growth. Growth hacking. Growth. The

Mathias Meyer (21:13) MMMM

Sara Hicks (21:14) growth. Yes. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (21:16) The J growth curve, it's all there. Hockey stick growth.

Sara Hicks (21:18) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (21:21) double down.

Sara Hicks (21:23) it's like double click double down. Yep. Core competencies. Ooh, lots of HR

Mathias Meyer (21:28) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (21:28) people love that core competencies one. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (21:31) Streamline.

Sara Hicks (21:34) ownership. Another vague one. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (21:38) None of these are not vague. think that's... Yeah. Ownership.

Sara Hicks (21:40) Yeah, that's true. That's true. probably just all of these. Yes. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (21:45) Mmm. It's a favorite.

Sara Hicks (21:46) Mm, yeah.

Ooh, this one, leverage. Ooh,

Mathias Meyer (21:50) Uh-huh.

Sara Hicks (21:50) that one gave me some chills, like leverage,

Mathias Meyer (21:54) ASAP.

Sara Hicks (21:55) Yeah, why don't you just say when? Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (21:57) Yeah, there's an acronym in there.

Sara Hicks (22:01) the back burner or parking lot.

Mathias Meyer (22:03) Mm-mm.

Sara Hicks (22:04) Yeah, back burner. huh. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (22:06) Yeah, we have to hit our targets.

Sara Hicks (22:10) it's that one's like, hit. Why do we have to hit? I don't know. Okay. Run it up. Yeah. Yeah. Run it up.

Mathias Meyer (22:16) We'll get to that. We'll get to the terminology like that. Yes, something very special about...

Sara Hicks (22:22) Run it up the flagpole. that's a really good one. Yeah. Like that's another, that's one that maybe just think of let's ladder, ladder this up. Like run it up the flagpole. Let's,

let's ladder this up to, you know, the bigger strategy or the bigger vision and mission. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (22:37) I have not heard that one. I mean,

Sara Hicks (22:39) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (22:40) there's something whimsical about running up the flagpole that I appreciate, but speaking of running something up the flagpole, we can also circle back.

Sara Hicks (22:50) and then touch base.

Mathias Meyer (22:52) Uh-huh, because we do have a lot of balls in the air.

Sara Hicks (22:56) Right, but I have a hard stop coming up. So. But I've got back to back.

Mathias Meyer (22:58) Uh-huh. And for me, this is a hard no.

Exactly. Back to back as a verb is one of my favorite things. I'm back to backing

Sara Hicks (23:09) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (23:10) this entire day because I have to find all of my low-hanging fruit. I have to catch them all.

Sara Hicks (23:17) Right, but we have so much traction here.

Mathias Meyer (23:20) and this is great because we need to find product market fit.

Sara Hicks (23:26) no, business is war. those are the I know we're going to talk about war jargon and military jargon, but business the business

Mathias Meyer (23:33) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (23:33) is war is. and I just want to add in here thought leader thought leader.

Mathias Meyer (23:40) yeah, yeah, yeah. The business is war

is one thing where at some point, Sun Tzu's The art of War entered business, the business literature, where it's something that people aspire to as a as a management thing is kind of almost like the Machiavellian, The Prince right? It's like,

Sara Hicks (24:00) Yeah, yeah.

Mathias Meyer (24:01) people go back to mention as something that

inspired their leadership, whatever that means, and

Sara Hicks (24:06) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (24:07) somehow we ended up at business is war.

Sara Hicks (24:10) I there's a,

is it Ben Horowitz book? I can't think of the name right now, but you he talks about a wartime CEO and a peacetime CEO. Yeah. Which I get the metaphor.

Mathias Meyer (24:18) for sure.

Sara Hicks (24:22) I get the analogy. I get the sort of different mindsets you have to be in at different times of stages of your company. yeah, wartime CEO or peacetime CEO. I'm not so sure about that. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (24:32) It is weird. I had this

conversation with a client just recently and we, thankfully, we just immediately went from the name to breaking down what that actually means. So the name was less important, but you know, we just, there was suddenly a list of actions that is actually implied for this,

Sara Hicks (24:50) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (24:51) this client. mean, beyond these just very common business words, like there's a whole slew of, verbiage.

that for some reason our industry or specifically management and organizational practices, culture, I mean culture is a word like that, we're really quick to adopt and just again,

Sara Hicks (25:14) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (25:15) also throw around like we know everything that is implied. You mentioned boiling the ocean in some way, to me, this product led growth is one of those things which

I'm often told that this is a thing that people want to focus on, but is it actually clear what that means? And there's more. There's more

Sara Hicks (25:32) Most of them.

Mathias Meyer (25:34) that comes up.

Sara Hicks (25:35) Yeah, product-led growth, that product market fit have become and again, those states people want to get to. then you really try to say, okay, what does that mean to us? Let's define this. So it's not just this term. course, yeah, you want to get to where your product fits in the market. You want to get to where you have a sustainable growth model or

sustainable business model.

Mathias Meyer (25:57) Yeah. And then again, what does

that mean for your company? Right? That's the clarity you actually need.

Sara Hicks (26:04) Yeah, break it down. What are the three things that means for our company? What we're selling, what we're building, where we want to get to. And I guarantee whatever those three or five things you define are going to be much more clear than product-led growth.

Mathias Meyer (26:20) Yeah. I mean, there's a couple more here, like blue ocean strategies, a common thing, or the Spotify

Sara Hicks (26:24) Great. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (26:26) model, which if you think about it, the Spotify model is appealing as it might be, but it really is only referring to two YouTube videos. That's what the Spotify model is referring to. And people have different interpretation of what that actually means. One of my favorite ones

Sara Hicks (26:42) Right, right.

Mathias Meyer (26:43) is Radical Candor. We have zero to

Sara Hicks (26:45) Gosh.

Mathias Meyer (26:46) one.

We have OKRs. Agile is one of them. Again, it's also thrown around so much that it's practically meaningless.

Sara Hicks (26:57) There's big agile,

there's big a agile and now little a agile. And then there's like,

Mathias Meyer (27:01) yeah.

Sara Hicks (27:02) yeah, the radical candor. Then everything became radical. was like radical transparency, radical

Mathias Meyer (27:07) Everything became radical.

Sara Hicks (27:09) transparency, radical honesty, radical. It's like radical focus.

Mathias Meyer (27:13) Focus, radical focus was also a thing.

Sara Hicks (27:16) Yes, because, you know, focus on itself or candor on itself, which is not enough. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (27:21) Yeah. And Radical Focus was all about OKRs, right? Which is one of those frameworks that everybody

Sara Hicks (27:26) Another great acronym.

Mathias Meyer (27:27) flocked to. And it's a great acronym for sure. And then the more recent one, like, Agentic was like almost like the word of the year of 25. And one I just, this was the last one I added, like Blitz Scale. There's an entire book around this. And I think this is what many of these have in common.

Sara Hicks (27:45) And a podcast, Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (27:47) And a podcast that

Sara Hicks (27:47) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (27:49) you know, their entire industries that are built or consultancies like books podcasts, the entire business models that are built around fast adoption of specific words and somehow trying to give them practical meaning. And I'm not, we're not, you know, judging whether any of these achieves that or not.

they get adopted so quickly that people just use them for in some ways maybe they sound good and impressive. They sound like, we're using OKRs. When again, the question should be like, which parts of OKR are the same as true for Agile or the Spotify model or radical candor? Do we actually think are right for our organization?

But that's a more difficult question to answer. I also have

Sara Hicks (28:34) Right.

Mathias Meyer (28:34) on this list, before we move on, agree to disagree.

Sara Hicks (28:38) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (28:38) Which is also one of those things where I'm saying, well, maybe we should talk more, so that we actually get to a point. It feels like an

Sara Hicks (28:44) Right.

Mathias Meyer (28:47) odd cop-out out of a conversation when it feels like you can't get anywhere. But in 1976, Nobel laureate Paul Ammann, I think is the name,

came up with a theorem that assuming that both two parties have the same assumptions about something and in the process they learn the same things and both this relies on facts, right? Observable facts, not like how I feel about something or what my conviction might be. If that is the case and both of them learn the same facts, they cannot disagree. They have to agree in the end.

assuming both of them are rational actors. And this is where all of this breaks down.

Sara Hicks (29:34) Right, right.

Mathias Meyer (29:37) I read this just very recently in a book about common sense and common knowledge by Steven Pinker and I was like, this is so good.

Sara Hicks (29:45) So good. So, so good. Often when I'm talking to a client and slip in the, you know, we just agree to disagree or something happened within their team or within their company. And I kind of pause I often think it leads back to it. There's a breakdown in accountability. There's a breakdown in understanding and who the owner is and who

Mathias Meyer (30:06) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (30:06) is the person who is deciding.

what decision is supposed to be made or outcome you're trying to get to. And there's usually some breakdown there. And then there's also a breakdown in consensus-driven, that that's really the right thing for a business. It just comes back to something we've talked about, Mathias a bit, which is accountability and delegation. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (30:30) huh. Yeah.

And accountability in some ways, like based on the dictionary, means to give an account or to give your account, which also means offering clarity on what you actually mean versus just throwing words out there. I have one,

Sara Hicks (30:46) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (30:47) I also, one of those sentences is also drinking the Kool-Aid. And I will

be honest, like up until two weeks ago, I actually had no idea what Kool-Aid is.

Like this is one of those US deeply entrenched US cultural things.

Sara Hicks (31:00) yeah,

the cultural jargon. Yes, yes. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (31:03) Yeah, this is, yeah, we'll get

to that. But also then drinking the Kool-Aid also has actually a quite dark origin, which again is something about US culture and involves a cult. Like I'm talking about Jonastown, which we're not going to spend too much more time on, but is part of the origin about saying we're drinking the Kool-Aid. It's like, oh, maybe let's not use it.

Maybe

Sara Hicks (31:28) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (31:29) let's use something else.

Sara Hicks (31:31) You just made me think of something that I think comes out of the agree to disagree culture, which is this is a living breathing document or this

Mathias Meyer (31:42) yes.

Sara Hicks (31:43) is a living breathing roadmap. And

Mathias Meyer (31:47) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (31:48) at a place where you can't decide and you're just agreeing to disagree and that you have these living breathing

roadmaps or vision documents requirement documents. Stop. If it's living

Mathias Meyer (32:01) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (32:02) breathing, there's a decision problem. There's

Mathias Meyer (32:05) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (32:06) a fundamental breakdown on you're trying to build or what the outcome is. I don't know. I see that a lot, these living documents.

Mathias Meyer (32:12) Yeah, people, yeah,

people really don't like committing to things. think, like, maybe the, I think there's maybe something deeply human in there. But also, as you say, there's, it points to something in the decision making process, right? Or as a level of uncertainty about who gets to make the decision and what does it actually mean for us to make a decision? Right? Because instead of saying this is a living document, you can also say, this is what we know to be true right now.

This is what we know we'll focus on right now. We will review it in six weeks or something like that, right? That's a...

Sara Hicks (32:47) Yeah, yeah.

Here's our hypothesis. Here's what we're trying

Mathias Meyer (32:51) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (32:51) to validate. Here's where we already know what's true. Here's what we're trying to validate. Here's the assumptions we're making and let's. go down this path and in six weeks, two months, whatever six months we will. will review the data will try to understand it. Were we right? Did we make the right assumptions? But

Mathias Meyer (33:09) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (33:10) it's like making it living breathing makes you.

always going back to question those assumptions and hypothesis, is just not, it just gets people stuck. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (33:18) Exactly. Yeah.

yeah, nothing seems like a final decision. And sometimes you just need to make a decision. And you know, there's this whole, well, God, we just climb from, from business jargon to business jargon. There's the two door decision thing, right? Which people also often

Sara Hicks (33:33) yes.

Mathias Meyer (33:33) use. And I tell them, there aren't really a lot of decisions that are actually two door decisions in your business.

Maybe that's not a useful analogy because most decisions that you make, you can actually change. I will just throw that out there. then again, you actually start talking about like, what are these decisions actually? What are the decisions we can change and what are the decisions where we know we can change them? But maybe the more useful one is also like, what is the risk each of these decisions carries and that we...

Sara Hicks (34:04) Right, right.

Mathias Meyer (34:06) may not be able to revert or when is the point when reverting incurs a big cost because that could be a thing i mean anyway pet peeve

why do we use this kind of lingo like what's why is this so dominant

Sara Hicks (34:23) it comes back to belonging. Just this fundamental

Mathias Meyer (34:26) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (34:27) human, we want to belong, we want to fit in, we want to be a part of this group or this community and so these terms create this sense of unity in a way. yeah,

Mathias Meyer (34:42) Uh-huh.

Sara Hicks (34:44) like it's belonging. mean you put this in here I just think like

In some ways helps us to cover up the insecurities of how, we just want to belong. I think it gets back to some fundamental human psychology of

Mathias Meyer (34:58) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (34:59) all want to be a part of something and acronyms and jargon and terms that we only understand or we think we understand help us to exclusionary and kind of

maybe more a part of something. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (35:12) Yeah. Which is where

again, where we go back to cults in some way, In some odd way, but I agree. Yeah.

Sara Hicks (35:16) Yeah. It's a direct line. It's a direct line back

to cults or religious groups, know, all the names and the ideology that nobody

Mathias Meyer (35:27) huh. Yeah.

Sara Hicks (35:29) else on the outside is going to understand all those acronyms and all those like

Mathias Meyer (35:34) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (35:34) phrases.

Mathias Meyer (35:36) And I mean, people might pretend like they do, right? Because, I mean, that's the whole idea behind this lingo why it proliferates so much is that we somehow imply that everybody understands what they mean, right? And in return, we sound knowledgeable, we sound competent, and also we see and hear everybody else using the same language.

Like even people, you know, when there are conference talks or people, you know, like we do on podcasts, talk about these things. lot of this verbiage is just thrown out there. And in a way it makes us sound competent. Right. Even though the research shows that the, the, opposite is actually true, which to me is the most fascinating part, because of course I looked for, I found research that actually talks about jargon.

We'll get to that in a minute, but the interesting thing I found related to the sense of belonging and appearing competent and maybe also confident using this language is like there is some research that suggests that two thirds of Gen Z millennials are convinced that using more business jargon will actually help them advance in their career.

Sara Hicks (36:55) wow two-thirds wow

Mathias Meyer (36:57) Yeah, so there's a past expectation where you're seeing upper echelons of your organization or other executives use this language. And hence, without even having a written down expectation of this, you imply that the same is true for you, that you have to speak this way to sound like a true leader or executive or manager.

Sara Hicks (37:19) Gosh, it's scary. Yeah, yeah.

Mathias Meyer (37:22) This

is damn scary, yes.

Sara Hicks (37:25) I mean, yeah, it's like you use these words because you want to appear smart part of competent. You want to be in in the in crowd in the know, make it sound like we know what we're all talking about. Like we're all going towards the same thing because we're using these

Mathias Meyer (37:40) Uh-huh.

Sara Hicks (37:41) phrases. They cover up all the insecurities of not belonging or not knowing. You know, there's

get to all the cultural implications, but like it's hard, especially for genders and cultures to raise their hand and try to say, can we explain this further? tell me what you mean this? that's

Mathias Meyer (38:01) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (38:02) speaking up is a lot harder in many cases than just going along and being like, yes, let's, yeah.

Mathias Meyer (38:10) Exactly. You

put yourself in a very vulnerable spot when you ask for clarification because it might make you seem dumb, right? Or you might fear that it does because also you see nobody else asking a question. I think maybe in reality, ideally it doesn't, but I think there's something about leaders.

Whereas some of the onus to actually change this culture is on them their team hold them as leaders, we go accountable, we go back to that word, but just tell them,

Sara Hicks (38:44) Right. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (38:45) hey, hey, Mathias, you use this word, I have no idea, just use this word again, you use jargon, can you please explain what it does? Like there's this thing where you can just ask your team, give them permission to tell you that, right? And then you set an example.

that it is okay to ask for clarification. Like for me, the cultural aspect, like drinking the Kool-Aid is one of them. I've known the phrase for many, many years. I just had no idea what its origins are and what it really means. And of course, even when you go to Wikipedia, you find three different possible definitions of what it could actually be. But yeah, the exclusive part is a really big one to me. And I think

This is what research also showed is that to you as the person using this language, it might seem like this is all you need to tell people, right? This is all they need and

Sara Hicks (39:37) All right.

Mathias Meyer (39:38) they will infer meaning because the meaning presumably is common sense, right?

Sara Hicks (39:46) Right, because everyone's

using these terms, not only in our company,

Mathias Meyer (39:49) Exactly.

Sara Hicks (39:50) but these companies are part of the industry that we're in. yeah, it's like, of course everyone knows what they means because everyone's saying them, but they

Mathias Meyer (39:58) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (39:58) all have a different understanding and here's one. You peel the layers of the onion and you get, yes.

Mathias Meyer (40:04) yes, my god.

Sara Hicks (40:07) And everyone's got a different understanding and the words are turns out pretty ambiguous to most of the team. And

Mathias Meyer (40:14) Yeah. Yeah.

Sara Hicks (40:17) they're not doing the work to really get to clarity or getting to decision or getting the level that they need to for everyone to kind of understand.

Mathias Meyer (40:26) Yeah, and bringing clarity is your one job as a leader. Like not creating

Sara Hicks (40:31) It's.

Mathias Meyer (40:32) more ambiguity, it is the opposite.

Sara Hicks (40:35) Right.

Mathias Meyer (40:35) Yeah, to me it is this lack of actionable things that is in there that really gets me like the the amount of times I've seen in a strategy something like the sentence leverage our network of partners or leverage our existing user base or Anything with leverage is it looks great in a strategy because the strategy in some way is supposed to be abstract Right and not super concrete

But then people still don't know what that means, right? Like, you could just nod and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, this makes sense. And we will do that because we do have a network of partners and we will use them. But then there's still, there's a step missing in between of actually translating that. And then once you've translated it, you throw away the original sentence and put that in there.

Sara Hicks (41:23) was just thinking, this is probably speaking more to the US culture, of some of this ambiguity by design because folks

Mathias Meyer (41:33) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (41:34) are worried if specificity that actually helps of let's get to, how many partners do we want to engage?

What are the specifics in terms of how we are going to go about and engage with partners to achieve our goal? If you get to the levels of detail, folks might be concerned that if they don't hit those targets, they're gonna lose their job. So by being ambiguous, it's a little bit safer, less risky

Mathias Meyer (42:03) True.

Sara Hicks (42:04) in a culture where, folks are indispensable.

not to go down that path, it is, it isn't. I just was like, yeah,

Mathias Meyer (42:12) Yeah, I mean,

Sara Hicks (42:13) yeah.

Mathias Meyer (42:14) it can't be real. And I thought about is like, how specific is this to the US language? And I do believe there is, mean, this is the part where I would have loved to do more research even. But even, you know, on the basic level, there is business terminology, like say in German and in other languages that is somewhat that has its origins in, you know, sports or the military.

I mean most of those terms actually that's exactly where they're coming from the word execution For example is also one with an interesting origin and etymology Which where it's like it is weird that we're using this word today given What it actually means or what it's used for or where where it originates, but anyway, there is I I was I was thinking about this

couldn't find enough proof. But I mean, some of the languages that we used are just inherently English language. But then again, like say speaking for the German language, especially in the world of business and also teenagers or maybe Gen Z. I don't like speaking in these generic and wavy generational terms. But I mean, overall,

Sara Hicks (43:21) laughs

Mathias Meyer (43:23) I think the English language has definitely made more inroads in being used as

a compliment to German language, right? It's become more more common that you would mix some English phrase into a German sentence. For example, the word lost, like from I lost something or I feel lost, especially the latter, is now something that is used by a certain age group. I am lost. The first words are in German and then lost is just...

It's just used and I'm I'm, you know, I'm personally,

Sara Hicks (43:58) Wow.

Mathias Meyer (43:59) I'm not a language absolutist in some way. I'm not harping on these words, like speak for me personally as something, where I have a binary opinion. I do understand. And I also appreciate that language evolves. you could argue that it's been evolving.

so much faster in recent years and new verbiage comes up where everybody especially grownups are like

What does this mean? What does six, seven actually mean, for example? My daughter is gonna laugh in the next room if she hears me mention this, I'm pretty sure.

I mean, maybe the example here is actually a good one because we as adults are left trying to interpret what that means in the same way as your employees left trying to figure out what your grand business

Sara Hicks (44:44) Same.

Mathias Meyer (44:45) language actually means.

Sara Hicks (44:48) Yeah, there's all these memes that take off,

they take off like wildfire and you're like, okay, what does this mean? did this start? And it's very similar to jargon and phrases that take off in companies and to create just ambiguity and they create exclusion. I mean, some of them feel,

funny but they also just create a sense of, no one's doing the work to really try to understand what's

Mathias Meyer (45:14) And

Sara Hicks (45:13) what's to be happening.

Mathias Meyer (45:15) I do love a good meme, but again, meme is also something meme used to mean a story that is handed down from generation to generation. And somehow along the way, it referred to cat gifs again, like

Sara Hicks (45:30) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (45:31) I appreciate a good cat gif

just as much as I appreciate a good story.

Sara Hicks (45:37) Yeah,

yeah, it comes back to clarity, I think, and shared meaning, right? And I think that's our

Mathias Meyer (45:42) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (45:42) job as leaders and managers is, as you said, it's bringing clarity to teams and situations and the business, creating shared understanding shared meaning. And if

Mathias Meyer (45:54) Mmm.

Sara Hicks (45:55) you don't have that things are going to break down really, really quickly and you're

going to putting out fires and other one, you're just going to, yeah, it's just going to create more and more ambiguity in the business and

Mathias Meyer (46:07) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (46:08) right?

Mathias Meyer (46:09) And that, mean, funny you mentioned that because this is the part where I was fascinated to look into the research. you know, we could keep talking about this for hours about our personal pet peeves and business language that, you know, gives us shivers. But there is research that helps us back this all up, right? There's research that indicates that using business language negatively impacts collaboration and communication.

Team and employee morale and therefore increases turnover. Third, it reduces trust in leadership. And so effectively, these are all things that actually make up an organization,

These are the essentials. Leadership

Sara Hicks (46:49) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (46:50) that you can high degrees of collaboration and communication, and good team and employee morale and low turnover.

So this is stunning. This was stunning to me. Like just as an example, there was research that looked at, I think it was 400 surveyed corporations, like large companies of about 100,000 and above,

Sara Hicks (47:06) people through it.

Mathias Meyer (47:10) where employees suffer an average annual loss of 62.4 million due to communication barriers.

Sara Hicks (47:17) Well.

Mathias Meyer (47:20) there are 400 more corporations that estimate similar productivity losses. And to be fair, are estimates that companies have themselves provided.

Sara Hicks (47:30) Right.

Mathias Meyer (47:31) It is only so reliable. But if you just ask the employees, 86 % of them would cite ineffective communication as the primary cause of workplace failures. And those failures

Sara Hicks (47:44) Whoa

Mathias Meyer (47:45) being

project delays and failures, again, reduced employee morale, missed performance targets, and lost innovation opportunities. It's, mean, there's a lot of words in these points that we talked about earlier that we mentioned as business jargons, but still, like if you are into business jargon and you read this

Sara Hicks (48:07) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (48:08) as data to tell you that you shouldn't use it, I don't know what other data you would need.

Sara Hicks (48:15) Right, the research is clear. I was just thinking, wow, if I do go back and take some classes, how fun would it be to write a thesis somewhere around this topic of, mean,

Mathias Meyer (48:25) yes.

Sara Hicks (48:26) just dig into this research even more. I might have to explore that because it's...

It's something we've both lived through our careers, we still experience

Mathias Meyer (48:35) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (48:36) with our clients and coaches and like this research crystal clear on what the impacts are of type of jargon and yet it's so pervasive.

Mathias Meyer (48:46) Yeah,

in some ways this is intuitive to us at this point, or have seen how, what it's like and what it could be, right? We've lived it ourselves, we teach our clients this, but it's been really interesting to just have this put into actual numbers. Like I also want to do more research on this because it is fascinating.

this other whole thing that also plays in there that has slightly different problems, which is military language. Or

Sara Hicks (49:14) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (49:15) language that is, inherently coming from, you know, some military background. like strategy, tactics, execution, those things, there's a clear path as well.

but some of the other lingua that we mentioned in the beginning, not necessarily, right? Hitting our targets is one of them, for example, for sure.

Sara Hicks (49:33) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (49:33) But there are so many more. I also had sports.

Sara Hicks (49:36) And sports too, military and sports

too, right? Like so much sports jargon and also incredibly exclusionary because not everyone is into sports. But yeah, military. mean, you've got some great ones here. There's in the trenches, the hill I'm willing to die on. mean, that's, we don't have this is not necessarily military, but it's just violent. And so I think of it as like, let's kill two birds with one stone. It's like, do we, must we?

Mathias Meyer (50:01) yes.

a sticky note where I collected all of this language, especially in the English language, that just implies something gory or

Sara Hicks (50:16) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (50:16) some connection to the military, like the war room or...

Sara Hicks (50:20) the war room. Every I mean, that's

a huge one. Like the you know, when there's an outage or something, everyone flocks to the war

Mathias Meyer (50:25) Yes.

Sara Hicks (50:26) room. Yeah, yeah. And then you got pull the trigger. I mean, how terrible

Mathias Meyer (50:30) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (50:31) is that one? Pull the trigger. Rally the troops. It's like.

Mathias Meyer (50:34) it's pulling the

trigger is almost as bad as executing. And

Sara Hicks (50:39) Yeah

Mathias Meyer (50:40) so if you look at where it actually comes from in some ways.

Sara Hicks (50:44) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (50:45) And domination, course, you want to dominate a competitor or you want to dominate a market some ways. Business is war, we come back to that.

Sara Hicks (50:52) Yeah, you want to win the win the war you want to it's all competitive. It's yeah. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (50:58) think...

I would hypothesize that this type of language specifically might be dominant in the English language. But I'm also, maybe I'm wrong. I would definitely like to research this. area think we both would like to. There's maybe 10 more episodes we can do on this topic.

Sara Hicks (51:13) Yeah, I think. You're probably

right, I don't know it in like you would be interesting to research. to.

Mathias Meyer (51:21) Germany,

nobody would talk about

somebody in the trenches. I mean, we have a very dark history, so maybe that plays into that.

There's language we avoid for historical reasons,

Sara Hicks (51:33) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (51:33) and they're probably good reasons.

Sara Hicks (51:35) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (51:36) But I think when it comes to this kind of language, it might

make somebody feel like they're sounding competent or this, this, language motivates people. But then I would really question that somebody would actually be willing to die on a hill for a business decision.

Sara Hicks (51:55) I don't even know what to say. These ones in particular, there's just so much underneath.

Mathias Meyer (52:01) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (52:02) And I do want to kind of read more about them and research more about them and the cultural implications, they're

Mathias Meyer (52:11) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (52:12) They don't create a safe environment.

These words, especially when majority of our teams are multicultural, you know have so many you know diverse backgrounds and use these phrases and it's not clear, they don't have a lot of ambiguity, but they don't create a safe welcoming environment and this leads to that.

I think that next part of that you kind of have called out in our notes was just like, gosh, have we just become too overly sensitive?

Mathias Meyer (52:43) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (52:44) You know, are we overreacting? Are we, you know, putting too much on this? language is evolving. new words emerge. Things go out of style more quickly than ever before.

Mathias Meyer (52:57) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (52:57) But I think what we're talking about here are words that are, and phrases that are just empty.

Mathias Meyer (53:02) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (53:02) They don't have concrete meaning across a group of people. They can mean different things to different people. I used to often go, like when I'd hear a phrase or a project name and I'd be like, okay, I'm gonna go ask, in every one of my one-on-ones with my team, I'm gonna ask them, okay, can you explain to me really

Mathias Meyer (53:19) Uh-huh.

Sara Hicks (53:20) basically what this project is?

entails in you know bullet points three to five and I would get you know 10 different answers from 10 different people and I'm like okay well there's the work there's the work we need to do right

Mathias Meyer (53:31) Yeah.

Exactly. It is about, you know, paying attention to the words that you use. and how they might be interpreted even on an intercultural level or maybe on a level of offensiveness. However, you define that for yourself or your organization, but can't ignore the data that actually tells you as a leader that

Communicating too broadly is actually harmful for the organization because your entire job is to bring clarity and as an executive, CEO or C level founder or anyone, anybody in senior management, your job is to increase the chances of success for the business. And if the data tells you that you're doing the opposite, then

Sara Hicks (54:11) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (54:16) That alone should tell you that you probably should not be using this language. And if you do,

Sara Hicks (54:21) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (54:22) at least make sure there is a common understanding of that. I mean, exactly. That's

Sara Hicks (54:26) It's a start. It's better than nothing. Yes, have an op. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (54:30) what we used to do. Like in one of my companies, we just started documenting early company memes and storylines in there so that we could at least point people to them.

And then there's also

Sara Hicks (54:41) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (54:42) a point where maybe we should stop using this because it's now a different company, right? And like the

Sara Hicks (54:47) Yes.

Mathias Meyer (54:48) number of people who know of this is just really small compared to everybody else. So documenting them opens up maybe a conversation, right?

Sara Hicks (54:57) I think that's a really

key thing that you just mentioned, which I think is maybe can make this actionable, you know, we often talk about doing a calendar audit. Well, what about a terminology audit? What about

Mathias Meyer (55:05) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (55:07) like go and you know, once a year you and your leadership team or your managers look at the terminology and decide phase some things out like clarify some

Mathias Meyer (55:18) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (55:18) things, clean up the dictionary. Don't just keep it.

things, these artifacts going on forever and ever. Yeah, that's an interesting

Mathias Meyer (55:26) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (55:27) actionable thing is like, okay, terminology audit. What's working

Mathias Meyer (55:31) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (55:31) with what's lost its meaning what, as you said, maybe only make sense for the founding team and no longer make sense now that we're a company of the size. We've outgrown it. I think that's healthy.

Mathias Meyer (55:41) Yeah,

And I think from a leadership perspective, I would just, whenever you catch yourself using language like this, or ask other people to help you catch it, right? That's like giving them permission to tell you when this is happening and then just replace that language with something concrete.

Right, right.

Sara Hicks (55:59) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (56:00) For example, that does might mean you have to sit down for 15, 20 minutes and actually think about it. But then those 20 or 30 minutes are that's an investment. Again, we look going back to the data that will easily pay off.

Sara Hicks (56:15) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (56:16) instead of just using the word, the phrase radical candor, just say what you actually do or what you want the team to do. Like Yeah.

Sara Hicks (56:24) What do you want to be candid?

Mathias Meyer (56:26) But

like, for example, I have this written down here, like, as we give our feedback in a kind but direct way, we do care about how our feedback lands, but want to make sure that everybody can speak freely and that their feedback is accepted and taken into consideration at all levels of the organization. it's not fully actionable to everybody, but at least it gives...

a framework, it defines boundaries of what we actually think radical candor means for our organization. personally, I'm not trying to harp on radical candor too much. It's just one of those things that I've

Sara Hicks (57:01) That's a good example, yeah.

Mathias Meyer (57:03) come across as something that is just used. And people, as in your example with the company, where every, know, 10 different meanings for a single acronym, or what a project is.

everybody has a very different understanding of what it could mean to some it might just mean I should be able to say whatever I think Whether that is actually true or whether it's just my perspective or whether it can be destructive Doesn't matter. I just want to be able to say that

Sara Hicks (57:30) Right, right.

Such a good topic. Such a good one. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (57:34) it is... yeah, it's...

But...

Sara Hicks (57:36) I'm so I love

that I love having the data. I'm so glad that we have some now research I'm to be using this research in some of my conversations when when jargon

Mathias Meyer (57:44) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (57:44) comes up. Yeah, I want to explore some more and. I'm going to point people to this podcast and to the notes and just say, just here, take a listen.

Mathias Meyer (57:51) Yeah.

Well, for sure include all of the research data that we found in the show notes for this. This is going to be comprehensive, I'm sure. Okay.

Sara Hicks (58:04) No doubt.

Mathias Meyer (58:05) it up and talk about something else that is also fun, stuff that has been going on in our lives. What's that for you?

Sara Hicks (58:14) Fun for me this week. I I did share with you before we got on the pod is I've been to the beach the past couple days.

Mathias Meyer (58:21) Mmm.

Sara Hicks (58:22) We're recording this towards the end of January and not to rub it in, but it is quite nice this week and in general. And it's low tide in the afternoon.

Mathias Meyer (58:32) Yeah, it feels like you're rubbing it in.

I'm just saying.

Sara Hicks (58:35) Low tide in the afternoons

is like perfection. When the beach is low tide, it's perfect weather. Other thing is I've been reading a just delightful book. One that I don't even want it to end. I'm savoring it. It's called The Correspondent.

Mathias Meyer (58:53) huh.

Sara Hicks (58:54) It's a novel written by Virginia It's a story told through her letters character and emails that she's written to various people. And these letters are just so beautiful and it includes people throughout her life that she's written to, family, friends.

explores different aspects of aging and life and forgiveness and

of 10 out of 10 no further

notes

Mathias Meyer (59:26) Okay. Yeah, writing letters is a fun lost art in some ways. I miss it in...

Sara Hicks (59:33) It's real. think

I think I think I will get back to it with this. Just having

Mathias Meyer (59:36) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (59:37) read this,

How about you?

What about fun for you? What about?

Mathias Meyer (59:41) I've been listening to a relatively new podcast recently that I've been thoroughly enjoying which is called The Rest is Science with Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens Hannah Fry is a math professor from the UK Michael Stevens is maybe most known for his YouTube channel Vsauce like the letter V and sauce as in bechamel

And even on that channel, he explores such weird scientific things. Like one of the more recent ones, was about, did we used to look older? Like when we were at the same age we are now. And I think the, nice thing about the podcast is,

Sara Hicks (1:00:22) you

Mathias Meyer (1:00:23) this is more of a conversation between the two of them,

They're really fun to listen to. And just maybe the latest episode that I was listening to was about, can you actually be bored to death? It is just, is it possible?

Sara Hicks (1:00:34) Is it possible? Is it possible?

Mathias Meyer (1:00:37) again, like those two are really fun to listen to. They have a really good conversation going and it is hilariously funny. They also bring up anecdotes

that are hilarious at times, like from all kinds of science. And I've just been really enjoying that podcast. it's, don't, you know.

Sara Hicks (1:00:55) I'm gonna have

to yeah, I'm gonna tee that one up. See it. I was hoping I was hoping

Mathias Meyer (1:00:59) I see what you did there. I see what you did there.

Sara Hicks (1:01:04) we will put these links to these books and podcasts in the show notes for sure. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (1:01:08) For

sure. And with that, I mean, this was, I had such a great time researching this and talking through Even if it's, you know.

Sara Hicks (1:01:18) I love the banter back and forth where we were just, you know, one after the other shooting off. Shooting off, there you go.

Mathias Meyer (1:01:29) It doesn't stop!

Sara Hicks (1:01:30) Jargon, yeah, it doesn't stop.