Specific and ordinary

Words needs to be specific and ordinary.

The test goes like this:

1. 1. Somebody must do something he or she was not doing before.
   2. The ‘do’ is a good, ordinary verb that a child will understand. If you’re not sure, find a child and ask him if he understands the verb.
   3. Doing the thing will have a tangible result that can also be described by ordinary words.

If you ask your people to “maximise the synergies between our knowledge-gathering and client-facing workstreams”, it sounds grandiose but could mean anything, and people have a lot of room to wriggle.

If you say instead: “Get some senior sales people together with some senior research people now and have them come up with ten new product ideas by next Wednesday,” it will be clear whether they succeed or not.

Specific and ordinary language is harder, because you have to work everything through.

Discipline in goal-setting is a big part of effective delegation.