"We need to drill down and deep dive for a granular approach to your plumbing" ...and...in English? 

Why do seemingly intelligent people often use utterly baffling language in the corporate world? A few weeks ago I had a meeting with a senior figure in the tech industry. It went well. In person, they were charming, to the point, and had an easy going manner and refreshing way with words. But secretly I’d been dreading it. A few days before we first met they’d sent me a summary of points to cover. This included, they said, the need for a ‘deeper dive’ on experience. A what? I was half tempted to make gurgling noises in the meeting if they used the same phrase again. Why not just say ‘a more detailed look at your experience’ I wondered? People who use such language often end up being tricky to work with, simply because they over complicate things by using business-jargon.

It reminded me of a senior comms person I worked with a few years ago who asked me, with a totally straight face, if ‘the plumbing’ for our campaign was largely in place, or were there aspects that need to be developed? I looked at him blankly. He looked at me blankly for looking at him blankly. It turned out by ‘plumbing’ he meant messaging, spokespeople, media relationships, internal processes to identify good stories, a structured plan of activity, and so on. A perfectly legitimate point, so why not just say so?

In both cases, perhaps it was partly explained by the fact that in the corporate-tech world they worked in, such terms were de rigueur — I suspect to some degree they knew their ‘stakeholders’ (urgh) wanted to hear that language — or were able to identify with it, so prevalent has it now become. But, in the real world, it is just nonsense. The irony is that in the case of ‘the plumber’ people paid him to communicate messages more clearly. Yet these were often bogged down with jargon.

And this gets to the very heart of the problem. In my job, businesses pay people like me to try and communicate often complex messages in a simple way which people will understand. When I say people, I mean journalists (who are notoriously anti-corporate jargon) and their readers. As my editor used to say, ‘explain it someone using the same language you’d use down the pub’.

And as you (probably) wouldn’t tell Auntie Nellie over Sunday lunch that you’re going to take a ‘deeper dive’ on the menu before deciding what to choose, why on earth try to be clever by introducing such nonsense in the workplace? It’s not big, it’s not clever, and besides, most people probably won’t understand you anyway.