Keegan Furtado elaborates on why “Let’s have a quick chat” now requires subtitles
It was 9:07 on Monday morning when Arjun, three days into his new job, received his first genuinely important-looking email.
His manager, Vikram, had written: “Hi Arjun. FYI. FYA ASAP. Need this by EOD, preferably COB. I will be OOO post lunch. Please socialise with the relevant stakeholders, get alignment and revert.”
Arjun read it once. Then again. He understood “Hi Arjun”. Everything after that appeared to require security clearance. Fortunately, every office has a Meera. Meera had been around long enough to survive restructurings, transformations, leadership changes and several initiatives described as ‘business critical’. More importantly, she spoke fluent ‘Corporate’.
Arjun showed her the email. “He wants you to finish this today,” she said. “Then why does it say FYI?” “Decorative.” “And FYA?” “That is the important bit.” “ASAP?” “Quickly.” “EOD?” “Today.” “COB?”
“Also today, but quicker.” “And he is OOO after lunch. When should I ask questions?” “Last Friday.” Arjun paused. “What does ‘socialise with the relevant stakeholders’ mean?” “Send it to everyone who might object later.” “And ‘get alignment’?” “Make sure they don’t object.”
“So why didn’t he just write, ‘Please finish this today, check with the team and let me know’?”
Meera smiled the gentle smile of someone watching innocence leave the body. “You’ll learn.” At 11:14, another message arrived from Vikram. “Can we have a quick chat?” Arjun immediately looked at Meera. She shook her head. “I am afraid there are some things even I cannot translate.” Welcome to corporate communication. Technically, we are all speaking English. Practically, subtitles would help.
When did work develop its own Language?
Every profession has jargon. Doctors have theirs. Lawyers have theirs. Technology teams appear capable of inventing three new acronyms before breakfast.
Corporate language is different because sometimes it seems designed not to explain complexity, but to avoid simplicity. Nobody has a problem. They have a ‘challenge’. Nobody disagrees. There is ‘misalignment’. Nothing is late. We are ‘revisiting timelines’.
Nobody has absolutely any idea what to do next. We are ‘exploring strategic options’. And nobody gets told ‘no’. The idea simply ‘does not align with our current priorities’. It is rejection, but with excellent manners. Then there is the alphabet soup. FYI can mean ‘No action required’ or ‘I want documented evidence that I told you’. FYA means ‘This is now your problem’. ASAP often means, ‘I have known about this since Tuesday, but it has become your emergency on Friday.’
OOO means ‘I am unavailable’, immediately followed by, ‘I know you are OOO, but just one quick thing…
The Corporate Euphemism Economy
To be fair, corporate language has a purpose. Organisations deal with sensitive situations, and diplomacy matters. The problem begins when diplomacy becomes linguistic gymnastics.
Consider ‘organisational restructuring’. Employees rarely hear that and think, ‘How fascinating. I wonder whether our operating
model is evolving.’ They think, ‘Should I update my CV?’
When difficult messages are softened until they become almost unrecognisable, employees stop listening and start decoding.
Every town hall becomes an episode of Corporate Crime Scene Investigation. Why did the Chief Financial Officer say ‘disciplined growth’ three times? Why has ‘agility’ suddenly appeared on every slide? Why is HR saying ‘future-ready organisation’? And why is my manager avoiding eye contact?
Enter the Corporate Translator
The Corporate Translator is rarely an official role. It is the Meera in every organisation. After the leadership call, someone inevitably asks: “What did they actually mean?”
“We need greater ownership.” Translation: Please stop escalating everything.
“We need to collaborate better.” Translation: Two departments are fighting again.
“We are empowering teams to make decisions.” Translation: Please decide, but remember we reserve the right to question your decision afterwards.
“We need to do more with less.” No translation required.
Some corporate phrases achieve perfect clarity all by themselves.
And then Artificial Intelligence arrived
Artificial intelligence has made this even more interesting. We can now turn: “Sales are down. We need to fix it.” into: “We are navigating short-term headwinds whilst identifying strategic levers to accelerate sustainable commercial performance.” Same problem. Much better tailoring. The danger is that as our tools become better at producing sophisticated language, we become worse at saying simple things.
Artificial intelligence can improve communication. However, it can also put jargon on steroids.
Leaders need to speak Human
Ultimately, this is a leadership issue.
People can handle difficult messages surprisingly well. What they struggle with is ambiguity dressed as reassurance. If targets are under pressure, say so. If priorities have changed, explain why. If something did not work, acknowledge it. And if you genuinely do not know, ‘We do not know yet’ is an extraordinarily underrated sentence. Clarity builds trust because employees do not have to spend their working day performing linguistic archaeology.
The Bottom Line
Corporate language will always exist. Some jargon is useful, some unavoidable, and some appears to have been invented solely to make PowerPoint slides look more expensive.
But organisations should worry when employees need translators to understand their leaders. Communication is not measured by how sophisticated something sounds. It is measured by whether people understand what it means and know what to do next. Perhaps the future-ready, strategically aligned, digitally enabled organisation of tomorrow needs one surprisingly old-fashioned capability: Saying what we actually mean.
Although before we implement that, we should probably socialise it with the key stakeholders, establish governance and schedule a quick touchpoint to discuss next steps. Meera will translate.
FYI only. No FYA. Unless you can revert by COB
The writer is a Deputy General Manager – Talent Development and Learning at Digitide Solutions and is a Certified Practitioner and Life Coach Email: keegan1694@gmail.com