Avoid Using Jargon | Strategic Planning

Not everyone within an organization is a Harvard MBA graduate with a decade or more of business planning experience. Business planners using highly technical terms as a way to impress others with their business planning prowess will often find that they confuse the very people they are trying to communicate with, namely, the organization’s workforce.

In order for a strategic plan to foster a high degree of organizational alignment, it must possess a clear, concise focus and be translatable to the day-to-day actions of every member of the workforce. To achieve this, planners should write the strategic plan in a language familiar to everyone within the organization; incorporating words, phrases, and colloquialisms traditionally used by the workforce. A strategic plan written in the organization’s language will speak to and ultimately be embraced by its implementers.

About the Author

Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.