Most people like usingshort-cuts. We all usually want to get from A to B as quickly as possible and when we want to get our message across to people with the same job as us, we often usejargon. It's a kind of short-cut that helps us communicate withoutwasting time. Jargon¹ is simply a kind of languageshorthandthat lets us say what we mean quickly. Or is it?

In the business world you might expect to hear or use a lot of jargon. However, a report just out in Britain claims that most managersoverusebusiness jargon and that this has a negative effect on how staff feel.

Investorsin People -a public bodywhose mainstakeholderis the Department for Education and Skills – says that using terms like "blue-sky thinking" rather than saying moreplainly"imagine new or different ways of doing things"bafflesemployees andwidens the gap³ betweenmanagers and staff.

Most employees in Britain, according to thissurvey, havea low opinion ofcolleagues who use management jargon. Over a third of those surveyed think it showsa lack of confidenceand almost one in five think people who use it areuntrustworthyor trying tocover something up.

Some of the most overused business expressions thatfell foulof those surveyed (and their morestraightforwardexplanations) were:

Get our ducks in a row (have everything arranged efficiently), brain dump⁴ (tell everything you know about a particular subject) and think outside the box (becreativein how you think about problems).

Peter Russian from Investors² in People said that aneffectiveboss is one who can communicate in a way which everyone can easily understand not one who uses a lot of management jargon.

So now that you've got the helicopter view (just an overview) of business jargon, it's time to give you a heads up (a warning) not to overuse this management speak. But that's a real no-brainer (that's simple), isn't it?