When new subscribers sign up for my e-letter, I send them a personal e-mail thanking them and asking for any topics they’d like me to cover. Here’s a recent response:
Our biggest challenge is how to communicate our complex, jargon-laden capacity building work in clear and compelling terms to policymakers and funders.
That’s a good one – a perpetual challenge for almost anyone who aims for clear, effective communication.
Here are 5 steps to ridding your communications of jargon.
1. Admit that you use jargon.
Every profession and every industry has its jargon. Jargon is time-saving shorthand for those “in the know.” When I write “stet” in the margin of a brochure, for example, the designer knows I mean, “I crossed that word out, but then I changed my mind, so please leave it in after all.”
2. Recognize that jargon doesn’t communicate to many people.
If I write “stet” in the margin of an article from my healthcare client, the writer will think I want it in a hurry but don’t know how to spell. As soon as you get beyond your own little in-the-know set, jargon doesn’t work.
3. Detect the jargon you use in specific pieces.
This step is much harder. My new subscriber probably recognizes some of her own jargon, but not all of it. “Capacity building,” for example. Plain English words, right?
Yes, but they don’t pass the Mom test: Would your mother understand it?
Actually, “capacity building” is a great example, because it doesn’t even mean the same thing among those in the know. Compare the definitions of “capacity building” by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Contract Services and by the National Council of Nonprofits. The definitions have almost nothing in common.
If the jargon doesn’t communicate even to those in the know, it certainly won’t get the point across to Mom.
4. Simplify the jargon into plain English that intelligent people outside your field can easily understand.
Step 3 is harder than steps 1 and 2. Step 4 is harder than all three combined.
- It takes more words to explain something in plain English than it does to refer to it in jargon shorthand.
- But we can’t count on Mom (or funders and policymakers) to read big long explanations.
In practice, this means that we have to leave things out, or at least leave them till later.
Leaders and directors hate to hear this. They want everyone to understand the wonderful work they do in all its complexity. They forget the lesson of step 2: “understand” and “complexity” don’t go together.
What is capacity building, really? It’s helping nonprofit organizations to achieve their mission.
“But what about the many things we actually do in our work of capacity building? What about the board development, the technical assistance on compliance and fiscal issues, the volunteer recruitment training?”
You have to leave it out, that’s what – at least up front. Online, you can make it a hyperlink. In a print document, you can put it in the main body but not in the executive summary.
If your work really is complex, you must resign yourself to describing only one main outcome.
Either that, or resign yourself to not communicating. Remember, “understanding” and “complexity” don’t mix.
Steps 3 and 4 are incredibly difficult. Few people are able to crawl outside the jargon of their own profession or industry even to the extent of recognizing every example of jargon when they see it. Steps 3 and 4 are why people like me exist.
5. Hire a pro.
For truly clear, effective communication, you need an outsider. Any outsider can accomplish step 3. But you need an outsider who is:
- Smart enough to understand your explanation
- Good enough with words to translate it into Mom-friendly language
- Draconian enough to keep your colleagues from mucking up a simple, clear explanation with a lot of detail
Not to put too fine a point on it, you need me. I’ve specialized in making specialists’ jargon accessible to general audiences for 20 years.