Buzzwords

In the next meeting you attend, take notes and underline the 'buzzwords': words, concepts and phrases that could have more than one meaning and therefore open to misinterpretation. Perform the following tasks:

• Underline the words, concepts and phrases you do understand.
• How do you know the others share your understanding of the words, concepts and phrases?
• Underline the words, concepts and phrases you do not understand.
• How will you gain an understanding of those words, concepts and phrases?
• When you observe churn in interactions, locate the words, concepts and phrases that are in the center of the interaction.
• How can the interaction be facilitated to gain a common understanding of words, concepts and phrase?

A starting point in improving communication is to explain and define the buzzwords that are creating barriers.

This is an invisible barrier to executing your strategy. When you bump into it, its hard to see it, hard to define and therefore hard to remove.

Technically, its a barrier to communication, but communication is only a means to an end. Understanding the impact to the end builds a business case to improve the means.