Whether consciously or not, we speak differently to each other when discussing business than we do when we talk about, say, the Great British Bake Off.
Studies show an over-reliance on jargon, acronyms, and unnecessarily technical language can be a sign of insecurity based on our status at our place of work and where we are in our careers — we use terminology we heard someone else say in an effort to sound smarter. Surveys have also shown that people pretend to understand the corporate lingo they parrot. It’s part of why we feel the need to levelset, drill down, ladder up, circle back, timebox, and pivot. We don’t talk like this over dinner, so why do we do this at work?
Jargon Jar is a Slack extension that will help re-train our brains to put buzzwords in the bin and send acronyms to the afterlife.
Whenever someone attempts to use some corporate jargon or a confounding acronym, they’ll be prompted to donate a dollar to the virtual “Jargon Jar.” That money can then be donated to a charity of the company’s choosing, so it’s doing good all around.
