We’ve been talking about clarity in our Management Excellence meeting over the last couple of days so I was amused to see this post about how baffling we can be at Microsoft. I read the original announcement that triggered this particular post. Wow, we can really get lost in words sometimes.
But so can other large organisations. See this for an example. What the heck is this phrase (taken from this web site) talking about?:
“I cannot state too emphatically that figures quoted must be reliable, mean what they are intended to mean, must be self-consistent and conclusions must not be drawn more than the figures warrant. I object to expressions being employed which are useful slang inside the department but almost meaningless outside.”
Sounds like the guy is asking for the correct and clear figures with no acronyms or buzz words. There’s a way to work out the fog factor of that phrase. You need to take all of the words of 3 syllables or more and divide them by the number of sentences to get the average number of long words in each sentence.
So taking this phrase again:
“I cannot state too emphatically that figures quoted must be reliable, mean what they are intended to mean, must be self-consistent and conclusions must not be drawn more than the figures warrant. I object to expressions being employed which are useful slang inside the department but almost meaningless outside.”
So that’s 9 long words in 2 sentences. Fog factor 4.5. Anything over 3 is considered “fog”
Hmm. No wonder people sometimes miss the point of what we’re trying to say…
PS: I just checked my own text to make sure I didn’t “fog” my own message before I hit post. Something I’ll have to look out for in the future… 🙂
Eileen's Digital Technology 