Page 48 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

Quite often when I did training exercises with some of my team members (which didn’t always go down too well because they thought I was trying to test their intelligence), I was trying to teach them business skills, especially the skill of being able to communicate on a level that everyone can comprehend and understand. So many times, people would write systems and confuse the hell out of it. As a good business person, you must train the mind to think simply and at a level anyone can understand.
It seems hard for people to break down a procedure into simple tasks. Who gets confused by assembly instructions? Often, they are far too complicated or use a lot of Curse of Assumption (COA). Taking the COA out of everything is a biggy!
2.2.1 Jargon
Don’t use jargon. Jargon is the term for specialised or technical language that is only understood by those who are members of a group.
One year we had a general manager of an Australian supplier speak to our group at a conference. He kept on saying the term ‘CIC’. No one in the room knew what it meant. I didn’t and didn’t want to appear dumb and ask what it meant. It was ‘Certified Installation Consultant’. The result was that no one understood the presentation, as we were all lost over this term he continually used. The use of jargon used in another country, that no one understood, certainly confused and de-valued the presentation.