Growing annoyance with the mainstream overuse of vague, misleading and nonsensical business jargon is growing. OK, so I have no proof of that, but I was pleased today to read that some business leaders are demanding more straight-forward language and less jargon.

Business psychologist Dr Rob Yeung says bosses need to bin the fancy language and revert to straight-taking to motivate staff.

‘It may become confusing or irritating for employees to hear the same tired clichés when they don’t see such management jargon being turned into useful action. Jargon can be confusing and unnecessary so much of the time, therefore managers would be better off thinking about how to communicate in plain English.’

Read more at The Daily Mail

Image (CC) subsetsum

Fast Company has a great opinion piece about the folly of open-door policies. Why don't they work? Because with open-door policies, employees "come through the open door to report concerns about others, to tattle, to report their analysis and judgment of co-workers, to provide leaders with a list of things they'd like to see changed in their reality or even to provide leaders with an evaluation of the leaders' strengths, weaknesses and development needs. Rarely can a leader cite examples where an employee used the open door for self-improvement, self-reflection or self-motivated growth."

The writer suggests that it's not important to keep the door open, but rather to open employee mindsets and their willingness to change the way they view circumstances, rather than simply wishing things were different.