Cannabis Fuzzy Words: Handle With Care
“If you can’t talk or write, you can’t think” Attributed to Christopher Hitchens
A blanket will suffocate a fire of oxygen. A variety of overused words have the same deadening effect on people’s ability to think and properly act in the cannabis space.
These 5 commonly thrown around words are insipid to the point of almost being useless:
Purpose
Family
Innovation
Collaboration
Flexibility
There are many more...
Woolly words are ubiquitous because…
> Speaker/writers want to sound intelligent to the ill-informed, naive and themselves;
> they are so hard to argue against. To wit, who is against innovation? Or what person would admit to having no purpose?
After working with hundreds of companies (as a consultant and leader), I’ve learned the hard way that clumsily used words and phrases are weapons of mass confusion, deceit and affectation.
COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN
The misuse of some words is not just about imprecise communications or pedantry. Their excessive use brings serious organizational problems:
(1) Like the Ella Fitzgerald song “Let's call the whole thing off”
Individuals won’t be aligned when there is no organization-wide definition of something….“Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto”
(2) Undefinable or imprecise goals like sustainability can lead to corporate virtue signalling and greenwashing.
(3) The habitual use of woolly words often breeds cynicism and reduces trust in management.
Check out the eye rolls of jaded California executives when members of their cannabis ‘family’ are not paying their bills.
Throwing around fuzzy words ignores the real-world costs of their pursuit.
For example, too much collaboration can slow down organizational speed and generate excessive amounts of busy work (i.e. meetings).
Flexibility is great except when you are trying to standardize products & processes and not burn out your staff.
This final example is particularly germane for cannabis.
The fluffy notion of “purpose” disguises hard-edged questions of how managers should make decisions and balance the interests of multiple stakeholders.
REVERSING THE SLIDE INTO PLATITUDES, BROMIDES AND PAP
--> Consider antonyms - a word is too fuzzy to be truly helpful If its opposite could possibly have something to recommend.
--> Align everyone on terms used in key activities and documents - I begin most engagements with a glossary of relevant terms.
--> Context drives clarity - This is about asking and answering the ‘why’ around the terms we use.
Fuzzy words are here to stay but that doesn’t mean we should be suffocated by them.
What words bewilder you?
#management #culture #LPS #MSOS #communications