How holistic solutions help you to engage with your stakeholders

In that heading: four words guaranteed to make me gnaw my knuckles to the bone (not How, help, you, to, with, your). And if you’re reading this far I’m a little ashamed of myself for any deceit. But thank you anyway.

 It’s not that I necessarily dislike any of the offending words above, but some – especially used in the wrong context – damage what you want to say. Through overuse, because they are jargon and because they don’t make enough sense.

Seemingly innocent terms can become toxic. They dilute the good things you say and can cause readers to glaze over and tune out. They’ve heard it all before, or what you’re trying to say is not clear.

Words are not toxic by their strength, but by their weakness.

 For example – and I have to pinch myself to stop swearing – but…

-        What are stationery ‘solutions’? (Solutions should only be used when talking about a liquid, or when you’ve got to grips with Fermat’s last theorem.)

-        Instead of ‘engaging’ with customers why not talk or write to them?

-        And ‘stakeholders’ sound like an angry herd who are about to impale you.

-        ‘Holistic’ just mystifies me. But it may be suitable in the arena of mystics and therapies and so on.

When words are overused they lose meaning. Remember when ‘innovative’ truly meant an advance? It was reserved for a new car design from Pininfarina, a blizzard of wizardry from Nabokov, when a phone grew a screen.

Innovative should never be used for a dry cleaner on the high street. Nor should a ‘disruptive’ delivery service spur much confidence.

Presenting these examples like so may sound flippant, but the point is serious. I understand very well that a company hammered for time can find it difficult to scrutinise everything you need to rush out.

Sometimes the conditions of herd behaviour and social influence play a part – terms can quickly gain traction (and ubiquity) when popularised by funky tech start-ups or entrepreneurial culture.

And it’s not the fault of a small business for using ‘innovative property solutions’ on a hoarding, because they might not hire a copywriter to help them compose their messages. (Different skills – I wouldn’t know one end of an engine from the other.)

But you should be worried when flaky lingo persistently creeps into what you say to your customers.

Because they’ll switch off, have a little snooze, and go find your straight-talking competitors when they wake up.