Many project managers unknowingly harm their teams’ output with one common practice.
It’s not about creating tickets at 3 AM, nor is it about attending endless stand-up meetings.
It’s about the way many PMs talk—their jargon.
You know, the “groundbreaking” buzzwords, the t-shirt sizes, and the “all hands on deck” expressions.
In this article, we’ll share a couple of short but interesting stories on how too much jargon can negatively impact your project management output.
By the way, if you want to start controlling your projects in the simplest way possible, try our tool out – https://app.astravue.com
Keep reading.
Too Many Buzzwords?
Many teams believe that using complex technical terminology is essential.
There’s often this idea that the more technical we sound, the better.
While that might make sense in fields like aviation, where precise communication is critical, it doesn’t hold true for desk jobs.
Here’s why:
People dislike jargon for two major reasons:
1. Poor Communication = Waste of Resources
Jargon makes people overthink, especially new team members.
One of our users shared a story about how jargon and buzzwords at his previous job were so confusing that it took him months to understand how things worked.
He had to think everything through multiple times.
He said the team wasted a lot of time trying to decipher what things meant, rather than working productively.
This led to horrible delays and damaged client retention.
Imagine losing clients because your team decided to use jargon instead of clear communication.
Keep it simple, so work gets done efficiently and everyone’s happy.
2. Confusion and Employee Attrition
Jargon leads to unnecessary confusion, sometimes with severe consequences.
Here’s an insightful story from another user of ours, which led to him quitting his job due to buzzword-triggered frustration.
This user was in charge of designing a quarterly review deck for the sales team.
His manager loved using buzzwords and would say things that almost always meant something else.
Close to the deadline, our user was ready with the deck.
His manager asked, “Are we aligned on this?”
Our user replied, “Yes, we are. I spent 3 hours aligning things.”
The manager insisted, “Check again if we’re aligned.”
Our user stayed late, ensured everything was aligned, sent the final version to his manager, and went home.
The next day, during the review, the sales team was confused and started flinging questions.
The manager was frustrated, thinking, “We’re aligned.”
He came back to our user and said, in an unfriendly tone,
“I told you to ensure we’re aligned. Why aren’t we? Why are they asking us all these questions? This makes us look bad; they won’t trust us anymore.”
Our user, frustrated, said,“You said to ensure we’re ‘aligned,’ so I aligned everything on the deck.”
He added, “You didn’t ask me to check with other teams about the data.”
His manager responded, “Aligning a deck means syncing and synergizing with other teams on the key figures, not aligning the deck.”
Our user was shocked. He said, “I can’t keep guessing the context of each word you say.”
He quit right away and started his own business.
When he put together a team for projects, he signed up with Astravue.
Since we love simplicity, we ensure our users work on their projects in the fastest and most efficient way possible through effective task and time management.
For more on effective communication strategies in project management, check out this insightful article from Harvard Business Review.
What’s Next?
This is only Part 1 of how poor communication can damage project management output.
In our next part, we’ll cover another important issue:
How poor communication damages sales and client relationships.
We’ll also provide you with four steps on how to turn things around and massively improve output from your project management teams.
Stay tuned.
P.S. If you want a really simple project management and collaboration tool, or just something to manage your daily tasks, try us out – https://app.astravue.com
