French Lick*
*A small town in southern Indiana. What did you think I meant?
The power of words…
Grab attention, communicate an idea, provoke, engage, energize… If you hunt large sales, you know that the turn of a phrase or the capturing of a concept hinge on powerful words. I just read Frank Luntz’ article “Words That Pack Power” in the November 3rd issue of BusinessWeek. He picks out five words from the executive lexicon that should be used regularly in the current business world…
* Consequences – Use it and the listener thinks that good or bad, it is about them
* Impact – Not ‘effort’ or even ‘solutions’- these come out as intentions and people are done with good intentions
* Reliability – Luntz claims that “Value is now the sum of price plus convenience plus reliability.”
* Mission – not ‘mission statement’ which can be hollow or trite, but the intense accomplishment focus
* Commitment – the idea of making it personal to the credibility of the speaker
I have to tell you, when I read this list I was left ambivalent. I think that word-selection is vitally important. I also think word-omission is just as important. I’m just not sure that these are good enough, especially the last three. Those three are dog-eared and tired shadows of their former selves. Also, Frank did not provide a list of words that we should leave out of the executive lexicon, a list I would like to have seen. (Fortunately, David Meerman Scott wrote a whole e-book about such words and phrases: The Gobbledygook Manifesto).
So, what other words do you think make the list of ‘Power Words’ for American business? What are the words we should get rid of?
There are a ton of words. I will give you a few from the top of my head:
* To use a thesaurus on the word consequences, I would use outcomes. An alternative that would be nice as an adjective for consequences would be “unintended”. If you want to get someone’s attention, surprise them. Unintended consequences implies thought, vision, and an ability to anticipate.
* Inconsistent – This is useful to help people analyzing activities in relationship to their brand, a campaign or a point of view. Again, in Whale Hunters speak, it is a “great answer” versus a “good answer” to a question.
* “Yes” or “No” – In this day and age, everything is parsed and preliminarily analyzed as though we are all politicians. Nobody wants to give an unqualified answer, so we get stuck with “depends” as the beginning to a long answer which gives various answers which make the decisive answer null and void. I think a definitive answer has a lot of power in it, and is best delivered with a long pause afterwards prior to any explanation just for the purpose of effect.
More to come I am sure.
1The business-speak trend that I drive me crazy is when words are used incorrectly, e.g. verbs as nouns and nouns as verbs.
I’m not referring to the awkward, formal use of nominalization in business writing. That will set your teeth on edge, but it is not new (Nominalization is verbs acting as the subject of a sentence, as in, “Consideration of the problem will result in rampant concern.”) People may think they sound smarter, but that sort of writing (and speaking) is pompous, overly wordy and hard to follow.
The trend that’s my pet peeve is, I think driven by sheer laziness — You can’t think of the right word? Heck, let’s just misuse another one:
* After lunch we’ll whiteboard that.
* Describe how you are going to action the data.
* We’re driving relevancy of communication. (ouch)
I believe that words matter.
English is a living language, and I know the day-to-day use of words will change their accepted meaning over time – a lot. But I hate to see us doing that simply because we are too lazy to search for the right word and instead add or remove suffixes to juxtapositionalize (ha!) another.
2Ah the irony of complaining about word use and posting a comment rife with typos. Proof read, schmoof read.
3Jennifer, I agree with both of your posts!
I was actually heading down the same path. (rather I was pathing the same direction…)
I also agree that YES and NO are used too infrequently. Unfortunately – I’m also guilty of this verbal transgression.
Have you ever analyzed an incoming piece of dialogue and later reflected on how many times the phrases “kind of” and “sort of” were implemented as qualifiers to otherwise measurable statements?
I have two additional thoughts to share:
1. While seemingly out of place in our contemporary business and casual lexicon, I sometimes wonder how much true meaning in communication has been lost in comparison to the methods by which thoughts, ideas and declarations were written and shared even a century or two ago. It seems to me we have lost some of the romanticism once organic, and readily understood in the way we then communicated with each other. What may now be relegated as historical verbal fluff, may once have been crucial in communicating absolute meaning, complete ideas, and accurate information.
2. Specific to business communication: At the end of the day, and even when caught between a rock and a hard place, we should break new ground and avoid cliches like there’s no tomorrow.
4For many of us, our default is to operate in broadcast mode, ensuring that our “powerful words” are fully comprehended and lodged deep in our target audience’s minds.
Covey gets the credit, but he stole from Assisi, who prayed, “grant that I may not so much seek … to be understood, as to understand.” As we all know, but often need to be reminded, there is great power in being silent, listening, thinking, and asking good questions.
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