Nobody Knows What Your Acronym Means

Every organization has its own language.

Spend enough time inside a business, nonprofit, school, municipality, committee, or professional organization and eventually you stop noticing it. Programs become acronyms. Events get shortened. Departments are initials. Services have names that make perfect sense to insiders.

Then someone new walks into the room.

They have no idea what anyone is talking about.

I encounter this constantly because so much of my work involves translating information from people who know a lot about something for people who may know absolutely nothing about it.

What does this acronym stand for? Who is this actually for? Is this open to the public? Do you have to register? What happens when you get there?

And one of my favorites: “Would someone who has never done this before know what that means?”

Sometimes the answer is yes.

Very often, it is not.

Familiarity makes things feel obvious.

The people communicating the information know the subject so well that they have lost the ability to see where the gaps are.

If you have been running the same annual event for 15 years, you know how it works. The person who moved to town six months ago knows none of this.

That gap between what we know and what they know is where a tremendous amount of communication breaks down.

The missing information often feels too obvious to mention.

That's exactly why it gets missed.

Acronyms are just the easiest example.

I have nothing against acronyms. Some names are long. The problem starts when we forget that the acronym is shorthand, not the actual information.

The same principle applies far beyond initials.

Businesses use service names customers don't understand. Schools use program names families haven't encountered. Community organizations announce events as though everyone attended last year.

Even marketing is guilty: SEO, CTR, CPC, CTA, CRM, KPI.

My job is not to demonstrate that I know the vocabulary.

My job is to help someone understand what it means.

Clear communication isn't “dumbing it down.”

Explaining something clearly does not mean assuming your audience isn't intelligent.

It means respecting them enough not to make them perform unnecessary work just to understand you.

There is a difference between complexity and confusion.

Complicated information can still be communicated clearly.

You cannot simultaneously ask new people to participate and communicate exclusively in a language designed for people who already participate.

Sometimes the smallest missing detail is the reason someone doesn't show up.

Where do I park? Do I need a ticket? Can I bring my kids? Is there a cost? Can I just show up?

And the question people may not say out loud: Is this actually for people like me, or is everyone else going to know each other while I stand awkwardly near a table for 20 minutes?

The more uncertainty someone has to overcome, the easier it becomes to decide not to bother.

Clarity is a form of hospitality.

You're telling someone: There is room for you here, even if you don't already know how this works.

Good communication anticipates the person entering the story today.

What does the person seeing this for the first time need to know?

Can they understand what you do? Can they tell whether something is for them? Can they figure out what happens next?

Their questions are showing you where the communication isn't working.

Make people feel smart, not lost.

The best communicators can know far more about a subject than the person they're speaking with without making that person feel stupid for not knowing it.

They explain without condescending. They provide context without turning everything into a lecture.

The goal isn't to prove how much the person writing the message knows.

The goal is for the person reading it to know what they need to know.

Use the acronym. Use the industry terminology. Use the official program name.

Just remember that somewhere, someone is encountering it for the first time.

Tell them what it means.

They shouldn't need a glossary to become your customer.

And they definitely shouldn't need one to come to your event.