Aah, jargon - where would we be without it? The news that Harrow Council has banned staff from using management-speak and insisted on the use of plain English will bring a sigh of relief from employees and the public.
During my media training courses I battle with jargon on a regular basis. One local council I provided some media training for explained that their dinner ladies were "meal operatives" while a pharmaceutical client insisted on talking about "local clinical management" - going to the doctors to you and me. I'll leave "loose stool urgency" to your imagination!
Another retail client who wanted help with handling the media and advice on doing interviews assumed that the public would understand the term "footfall" and that "delivering an enhanced customer experience" would mean something to readers of a local newspaper or listeners to the afternoon radio show. Also part of their daily language was "varied product offering" and "customer proposition." Come again? On the other hand, I don't think many customers would come in the first place!
Weaning clients off jargon and helping them to use plain language is essential if you want to handle the media effectively. It's not about dumbing down - it's just good, clear communication. Look at some of the greatest speeches in the English language - most of th e words in Churchill's fight on the beaches speech are just on syllable.
The psychologist Flesch developed a reading score relating to complexity of language. In good corporate communications the simpler the language the most trusted the company. As Enron became engulfed in its financial difficulties, the language its senior executives and company spokespeople used became more opaque and jargon-ridden, according to the Flesch score.
My pharmaceutical clients soon understand that every day language would engage their audience while, by the end of the media training course, the retailer was explaining to his audience: "When you come into our shop, you'll see a wonderful range of fresh fruit and vegetables and immediately you'll smell the fresh bread from our bakery". Painting pictures is the best way to communicate and persuade when doing interviews and in everyday life.
What will be really interesting to see is whether Harrow Council sticks to their resolution or ends up seeking stakeholder engagement by going for the low hanging fruit by opting for a meaningful dialogue at this moment in time.
Pardon?
Thursday, October 9, 2008
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