Talked my plant lady about our quarterly report and she cut through all the jargon

I was at a team happy hour last Tuesday and got cornered by Sarah from accounting. She asked what I actually do all day and I started blabbing about message mapping and stakeholder alignment. She just looked at me and said 'so you make the boring stuff sound less boring?' That hit different because she was right. I spend hours polishing words for earnings releases and town hall decks but we never ask if anyone even reads them. Got to thinking maybe our whole comms strategy is backwards. She didn't mean it mean but it made me wonder if we're just talking to ourselves. Anyone else had an outsider call out your whole workflow with one honest question?

2 comments

2 Comments

thea1432d ago

That one conversation doesn't mean your whole career is fake.

reese_taylor692d ago

Yeah I had the same thing happen during a quarterly all hands last year. Our CEO gave this big speech about growth and innovation and my neighbor who works in logistics leaned over and said "what did he actually just say?" It made me realize we hide behind words to avoid saying anything real. Now I think about that whenever I write a talking point or a slide. Do you think our companies would actually let us write plain language stuff or would they fight it because it sounds too casual?