My lungs are currently vibrating with the metallic tang of bus exhaust and the sharp, rhythmic pulse of failure. I missed the number 7 bus by exactly 10 seconds. I watched the taillights wink at me like a cruel joke, a red smear against the gray morning. Now, I am sitting in this conference room, damp with sweat, staring at slide 47 of a deck that should have been an email, or perhaps a silent prayer for a quick death. The presenter is talking about ‘leveraging cross-functional synergies to operationalize our core competencies,’ and I am struck by the realization that I have no idea what is happening. None of us do. We are all just nodding, a collection of 17 heads bobbing in a sea of linguistic sludge, pretending that these words have weight.

Jargon is not a language; it is a camouflage. It is the acoustic version of those dazzle-painted ships from the first World War, designed not to hide the object, but to make it impossible to tell where it is going or how fast it is moving. When a manager says they want to ‘socialize a holistic strategy,’ they aren’t actually telling you a plan. They are building a defensive perimeter. If the strategy fails, they can claim the socialization was incomplete. If it succeeds, they can take credit for the holism. It is a linguistic shell game where the pea has been replaced by a small, evaporated cloud of nothingness. I hate it. I absolutely despise it. And yet, when it was my turn to speak 7 minutes ago, I heard myself tell the group that we needed to ‘circle back‘ on the ‘deliverables.’ I am part of the rot. I am the bus that just left me behind.

The Anchor: Language Tied to Gravity

Olaf’s language is anchored to the physical world. There is no room for synergy when you are talking about gravity and rusted steel. He doesn’t need to obscure his meaning because he actually knows what he is doing. Jargon, I’ve come to realize, is the primary tool of the incompetent and the terrified.

We use these high-level abstractions because we are afraid of being pinned down to a specific outcome. If I say I will ‘increase sales by 7 percent,’ and I only increase them by 3 percent, I have failed. But if I say I will ‘initiate a strategic pivot to enhance market penetration via diversified engagement channels,’ I can spend 107 days explaining why the pivot is still in progress and how the engagement is actually deepening even if the numbers aren’t moving yet. It is a way of living in the future tense so we never have to account for the present. We are all just 7 steps away from being found out, so we build walls made of ‘agile’ and ‘disruptive’ and ‘lean.’

The Thinning Air: Detachment from Reality

There is a strange, almost physical sensation that comes with sitting in a room where language has been detached from reality. It feels like the air is getting thinner. You start to lose your grip on what your job actually is. Are you a person who solves problems, or are you a person who facilitates the discussion of problems? I spent 37 minutes today listening to a debate about whether we should use the word ‘partnership’ or ‘ecosystem.’ Not once did we discuss what the actual people on the other end of that ‘ecosystem’ needed from us. We were too busy polishing the mirrors of our own vocabulary. It’s a collective hallucination. We all know it’s nonsense, but we’re all too afraid to be the one who points out that the Emperor’s new ‘framework’ is just a fancy way of saying we don’t have a plan.

I remember once trying to fix a leak in my basement. I called a guy who talked about ‘hydrostatic pressure mitigation systems‘ and ‘subterranean moisture barriers.’ He quoted me $7,777. Then I called another guy who looked at the floor and said, ‘The ground is wet because that pipe is cracked. I’ll replace the pipe.’ He charged me $117 and the water stopped. The first guy was selling me a narrative; the second guy was selling me a solution. This is the divide. In a world where everyone wants to be a ‘thought leader,’ there are very few people left who actually know how to fix a cracked pipe. We have become a society of narrators, and we are slowly losing the ability to describe the world as it actually exists.

Ego and The 207-Ton Economy

This obsession with complexity is a virus. It starts in the C-suite and trickles down until even the interns are talking about ‘bandwidth’ instead of time. We’ve forgotten how to be simple. We’ve forgotten that clarity is a form of respect. When you speak clearly to someone, you are saying, ‘I value your time enough not to make you translate my bullshit.’ When you use jargon, you are saying, ‘I want you to be impressed by me, or intimidated by me, or so confused that you don’t ask any follow-up questions.’ It’s an act of ego, not communication. It’s about power, not partnership. And the worst part is, it works. It works until the 207-ton roller coaster of our economy hits a loose bolt and the whole thing starts to shake apart.

I find a weird comfort in things that can’t be explained away with a buzzword. A hammer. A brick. A well-designed cooling system. When you’re dealing with something like home climate control, you don’t want a ‘climate-agnostic comfort delivery vehicle.’ You want to be cold in the summer and warm in the winter. You want a machine that works and a price that makes sense. People appreciate the directness of companies that don’t hide behind a veil of professional mystery. It’s why some people prefer the straightforwardness of a brand like minisplitsforless, where the value proposition isn’t buried under 17 layers of marketing fluff. You buy a thing, you install the thing, the thing works. There is a dignity in that kind of transaction that is completely absent from the high-level strategic partnerships we spend our days ‘ideating’ about.

The Reckoning: Choosing Nouns and Verbs

If I could go back to this morning, 7 minutes before the bus pulled away, I would stop running. I would stand there and breathe the cold air and admit that I was late because I didn’t want to go to that meeting. I would admit that I’m tired of the ‘synergy’ and the ‘alignment.’ I want to speak in nouns and verbs again. I want to say ‘I don’t know‘ when I don’t know, instead of saying ‘that’s a great question, let’s take that offline and deep-dive it during our next sync.’ Imagine the time we would save. Imagine the 7,000 hours of human life that are currently being wasted every day in rooms where people are using 107 words to say absolutely nothing.

The Only Word That Matters

I’m going to go back into that room now. The presenter is on slide 57. He is talking about ‘leveraging our internal intellectual capital to drive scalable growth.’ I’m going to raise my hand. I’m going to ask him what he means. Not in a mean way, but in a real way. I’m going to ask him to explain it like I’m a human being and not a ‘stakeholder.’ I’ll probably be met with silence. There might be 7 seconds of pure, unadulterated awkwardness where everyone realizes the slide is empty. But maybe, just maybe, someone else will exhale. Maybe someone else will realize they missed their bus too, and they’re tired of pretending that the exhaust smells like roses. We have to start somewhere. We have to start by calling a bolt a bolt, and a lie a lie, even if it’s dressed up in a suit and a tie.

There are 27 more slides in this deck. I have a pen and a notebook. On the first page, I have written the word ‘Why?’ in large, block letters. It is the only word I plan to use for the rest of the day. If the world is going to continue its ‘agile transformation,’ it can do it without me. I’d rather be standing on the curb, watching the bus disappear, knowing exactly where I stand and what time it is, than be inside this room, perfectly aligned with a dream that doesn’t exist. How did we get so far from the truth that we became afraid of it? Why do we think that adding more syllables makes us more important? I don’t have the answer, but I know that the next time someone asks me to ‘circle back,’ I’m going to tell them I’ve already done 7 laps and I’m ready to just go home.

I’d rather be standing on the curb, watching the bus disappear, knowing exactly where I stand and what time it is, than be inside this room, perfectly aligned with a dream that doesn’t exist.