The Value of a Business Dictionary

In BusinessLife, every industry has words and jargon that might be used in differently by other businesses. For example, in finance, the word “counterparty” is a legal party, whereas in the tech world, it refers to a platform for building a P2P app. As another example, to a developer the word “code”  refers to a computer language, but for a salesperson, it is a term to get a discount.

Every word has variables that can affect how it is used or understood. It depends on geography, context, and an industry’s culture.

In many instances, business owners and executives can either ask employees to be careful of the use of jargon, or to support the uniqueness of it and create internal dictionaries.

A dictionary’s use internally

By creating an internal dictionary, you can help ease the discomfort in using or having to explain unique words within your industry. Your organization may reap the benefits of running meetings more effectively, strengthening a company’s culture, and creating exclusivity in your particular industry.

Meetings run more smoothly without the need to pause and explain a concept. Interruptions within meetings are one of the most challenging aspects to deal with, and disruptions are more likely to occur when confusion and misunderstandings arise. The absence of a business dictionary can also affect how your teams meet deadlines and approach opportunities.

The use of an internal dictionary will facilitate successful communication among your employees and executives. In a way, it builds your company’s culture regardless of positions within your organization. This type of high-level communication among your team makes your business unique from competitors. By using specific terms, a company differentiates itself from its competitors by using precise vocabulary others may not employ.

Values of speaking the same language in business

Working harmoniously within an organization requires effective communication where everyone understands each other. The benefits you gain in creating a streamlined language within your team are vital in moving your business forward. Speaking the same language in your profession allows for feelings of belonging; it creates a sense of community within your company.

There are five components to efficiently speaking the same business language. These help condense great ideas into more straightforward concepts to grasp.

• Clarification, which comes from understanding the meaning of a word that might mean something else in a different context.
• Understanding, which allows individuals within a company to take verbal shortcuts and communicate with precision, making things easier to understand.
• Ease of communication, where by collaborating to create a more accessible introduction of acronyms or shortcuts in conversations, your employees can focus on innovating and moving forward versus continually trying to understand each other.
• Definition allows the organization to have precision in communications, and yields less of a likelihood to lead to confusion between departments. Confusion creates unnecessary tension between coworkers and collaborators. The more communication is carried out with a precise definition of the subject at hand, the accurately you can convey what you intend.
• Commonality, or finding common ground, is considered a valuable component to speaking the same lingo because it keeps the conversations on the same page and relevant.

Building a business dictionary

Even with an agreed-upon vocabulary to employ, misunderstanding can happen. A business dictionary should be formalized to truly make it easier for everyone to understand. Otherwise, the language that arises might be vague, exaggerated, and even pompous. To avoid misunderstandings and masking what you truly intend to say, consider the following steps to build a business dictionary within your organization.

Evaluate and put ample thought into the components of your business dictionary; your next step is to build a reliable business language dictionary with the right words. Instead of using corporate language that can be lazy and lacking in actual direction, fill your business language with words that compel you to think hard and be clear about the direction of intention.

Next, be sure to identify the terms that are integral only to your business and consider creating an understanding of the words you would like to use. Confusion caused by misinterpreted definitions and information can have severe consequences within your organization. It is vital to focus on using terms that are pertinent to your team members to avoid the risks of costly errors.

Having the definition and building a thesaurus around the business language you use every day within your group may be a long process, but by defining what the words mean, you can then determine how the terms may be utilized to drive productivity and efficacy.

At the end of the day, you should be considerate of productivity drops due to wasted time searching for information your employees do not understand, because you have ineffectively used business vocabulary. To be truly effective with a business dictionary, the purpose should always be clarity.

Does a business dictionary make sense for you?

Having a specialized business language within your organization has its advantages and disadvantages. The results depend on how considerate you are of the use of business jargon – do you use corporate lingo to avoid having to truly understand a concept, or do you use internal business language to boost the productivity of your team?

When appropriately applied, internal business language can be a game changer for many industries, especially in startups, who often find themselves pioneering a product or a concept.

Given the right resources, how will you use effective internal business language within your company?

To open a conversation with Peter Marcus about building a dictionary for your business, contact us today.