Humans love words.
We use them to express ourselves, communicate and make sense of the world. Words have the capacity to lift us up and bring us down. They can express love and nurture relationships. But they can also distance us from one another by widening misunderstandings and tear apart what unites us. The pen is mightier than then sword, we say. We all sense the power words have to defend or destroy what is right, beautiful and precious in life.
So, we need to choose our words carefully.
Words are the world’s largest resource. We experience that in unfamiliar situations like a pandemic or when we don’t have answers to important existential questions in our lives. We then share stories in search of meaning. Words are the cartographers we send out to help us investigate and map unknown territories.
Take a minute to think about the words we use in our professional lives. Adaptation, transformation, agility and purpose. What do these words mean to you? Do they mean the same to others? Why do we use reductionistic words to capture things that matter in organisations? The limits of our world are the limits of our language, Ludwig Wittgenstein once stated. He also emphasised that once in a while we need to clean the words we use. Jargon is sadly a familiar script in organisations and often forces people to perform pseudo work…
