The Trance of Unspoken Meaning

The presenter’s hand moves in a frantic, sweeping arc that mimics the upward trajectory of a graph no one has actually seen. ‘We need to leverage our core competencies to operationalize a paradigm shift in our go-to-market synergies,’ he says, and for a split second, the oxygen leaves the room. I’m sitting in the back, my charcoal pencil hovering over a sheet of heavy-grain paper, trying to capture the specific tension in his jaw. It’s the 18th time he’s used the word ‘synergy’ in the last 28 minutes. Around the mahogany table, 8 senior executives nod in a slow, rhythmic unison that feels less like agreement and more like a collective trance. No one asks for a definition. No one dares to break the spell. To admit that you don’t know what ‘operationalizing a paradigm shift’ actually means is to admit that you aren’t part of the tribe. It is a confession of intellectual poverty in a room that demands the appearance of infinite wealth.

This meeting was supposed to last 48 minutes, but we are already deep into the 58-minute mark because we spent a significant portion of the time debating ‘vertical integration strategies’ that haven’t been defined yet. As a court sketch artist, I spend my life looking for the truth in the tiny fractures of a person’s expression. I look for the 18 subtle ways a lip can quiver when a lie is being told. In this boardroom, the lie isn’t a criminal conspiracy; it’s a linguistic one.

The Cost of Complexity

Corporate jargon is not a tool for precision. If we wanted to be precise, we would say ‘we are going to sell more shoes by making the website easier to use.’ Instead, we say ‘we are optimizing the user-centric interface to drive conversion metrics within the digital footprint.’ The second sentence sounds more expensive. It sounds like it was written by someone who went to a university with at least 88 buildings. It creates a barrier to entry that protects the speaker from the terrifying possibility of being understood. Because if you are understood, you can be judged. If you are understood, your idea can be tested. But if you wrap your strategy in a thick, suffocating blanket of ‘holistic ecosystems’ and ‘interconnected scalability,’ you are safe. You are a ghost in the machine, untouchable and unassailable.

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Jargon is the armor of the unsure.

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I remember sketching a trial 8 years ago where the defendant, a middle-manager accused of some creative accounting, tried to explain his actions using the same language I’m hearing today. He spoke about ‘mitigating legacy liabilities’ and ‘re-contextualizing fiscal disbursements.’ The judge, a woman who looked like she had seen at least 78 years of human nonsense, leaned over the bench and told him to speak English. The man froze. Without his jargon, he had nothing. He was a man standing in a storm without a coat. That’s the danger of this epidemic; it’s a dependency. We become so used to the crutch of ‘high-level overviews’ that our leg muscles of clear, critical thinking begin to atrophy. We lose the ability to describe the world as it actually is. We start to believe our own fluff. I’ve seen 38 different companies fail because they couldn’t describe their problem in a sentence that a 8-year-old could understand. If you can’t explain why you’re losing money without using the word ‘headwinds,’ you don’t actually know why you’re losing money.

Exclusion and Silence

There is a specific kind of violence that jargon does to collective intelligence. It creates a hierarchy based on vocabulary rather than value. In this room, there is a junior analyst who has a brilliant idea about how to fix the distribution bottleneck. I can see it in her eyes-she’s 28, sharp, and currently chewing the end of her pen until it bleeds ink. But she doesn’t speak ‘Executive.’ She hasn’t mastered the art of the ‘deep dive’ or the ‘blue-sky thinking session.’ So she stays silent. Her 188-page report, filled with actual data and actionable solutions, will likely be ignored because she didn’t frame it as a ‘disruptive pivot.’ We are selecting for the loudest talkers, the ones who can string together the most syllables without breathing, rather than the people who can actually solve the 88 problems we have on our plate today.

It reminds me of the time I tried to fix my own sink. I watched 8 videos online, each one more complicated than the last, filled with terms like ‘p-traps’ and ‘compression fittings.’ I felt like an idiot. Then, my neighbor came over, pointed at a small black ring, and said, ‘The rubber is broken.’ He replaced it in 8 seconds. The world of finance and corporate strategy is exactly like that sink. We make it sound like rocket science so we can charge rocket science prices, but usually, the rubber is just broken.

The Price of Performance

My charcoal pencil snaps. The presenter is now talking about ‘low-hanging fruit.’ This is the 108th time I’ve heard that phrase this month. It’s a classic. It’s the kind of phrase used by people who have never actually picked fruit. If they had, they would know that the low-hanging stuff is usually bruised or half-eaten by squirrels. But it sounds good. It sounds like an easy win. The room continues to nod. I look back at my sketch. I’ve drawn the presenter not as a man, but as a collection of empty boxes stacked on top of each other. It’s the most honest representation of the meeting so far. We are building a tower of empty boxes and wondering why it collapses whenever the wind blows. The lack of clarity is a systemic risk. It means we are making decisions based on vibes rather than facts. We are ‘aligning’ our ‘interests’ without ever defining what those interests are. It’s 3:08 PM, and I’m wondering if the locksmith will charge me $188 or if I can find a way to jimmy the lock with a coat hanger I found in the trash.

I’ve made mistakes before, plenty of them. I once sketched a witness with 6 fingers because I was too busy listening to his testimony about a ‘multi-faceted approach’ to realize I wasn’t looking at his hands. I acknowledge my errors. But the error of the jargon epidemic is one we refuse to admit. We treat it like a professional necessity, like wearing a tie or pretending to like the office coffee. But a tie doesn’t stop you from thinking. Jargon does. It replaces the messy, difficult work of analysis with the easy, performative work of labeling. We aren’t analyzing a market; we are ‘penetrating a sector.’ We aren’t firing people; we are ‘right-sizing the human capital.’ It’s a linguistic anesthetic. It numbs the pain of the truth.

The Wait for the Key

As the meeting wraps up, the presenter asks if there are any questions. The silence is 8 seconds long and heavy enough to sink a boat. Everyone is terrified that their question will reveal their ignorance. If I asked, ‘What is a core competency, exactly?’ the room would treat me like a leper. So we all stand up, gather our 8-page agendas, and shuffle out. We will go back to our desks and spend the next 118 minutes trying to figure out what we are actually supposed to do. I’ll go down to the parking lot and wait for the locksmith. I’ll probably have to wait 38 minutes in the heat, watching the sun reflect off the chrome of my locked car. I’ll think about how easy it would be if I just had the key. Clarity is the key. It’s the thing that opens the door and lets us actually get to work. Without it, we are just standing in the parking lot, looking through the glass, using big words to describe the keys we can’t reach. I hope tomorrow, someone has the guts to use a small word. I hope someone says ‘help’ or ‘no’ or ‘why.’ But for now, I’ll just sharpen my pencil and wait for the next paradigm shift to be operationalized at 9:08 tomorrow morning.