“When you say “blah blah” you ruin the story“. These words of wisdom didn’t come from a storytelling expert or a communication specialist. These words of wisdom came from my friend’s 4 year old daughter Chloe, as she was listening to a conversation between adults.
The words really struck a cord with me because even though we may not be saying the actual words “blah blah” we are using other jargon and acronyms, that we may as well be saying “blah blah”.
What Chloe was really saying was that “When you say blah blah I no longer understand what you are saying”‘. So if you take that into business the same applies.
“When you say executional excellence, you are saying Blah Blah and people no longer understand what you are saying”
“When you say we need to expand our customer value proposition, you are saying Blah Blah and people no longer understand what you are saying”
OK I’ m sure you are probably getting the picture. Most of us use TLA’s (Three Letter Acronym’s) and corporate jargon because it is easy …for us. But the big problem with that is most of the time, people no longer understand what we are saying.
Now I spent 17 years at the NAB in IT and HR roles and I am as guilty as the next person of using acronyms (I managed to use three in this sentence!). So it’s not easy to break the habit but next time perhaps let’s all take a cue from a 4 year old and realise that when we say “blah blah”, we really do ruin the story.
