Make jargon your superpower - by using it differently to everyone else

Everyone hates industry jargon - here's how to use it to stand out

If you could stand out from everyone in your industry and earn greater respect with the advice you give - would that be useful to you?

True story: in 1996 I was working a summer job in a Italian restaurant when someone asked what the “soup of the day” was. 

I didn’t know so asked the (Italian) Chef.   

His response -  “eespeeanam”

- Sorry?

“EE – SPEE- AN - AM!”

I didn’t know what to do with the sound I’d just heard. Was it one word? Was it Italian? It made no sense to me, but I did have to go back to the table and give some sort of response.  So what did I do?

Of course, I did a verbal “cut and paste” of what I’d heard – “eespeeanam” I said & received a polite “thank you” from the table, who ordered something else.

(Turns out what I’d heard was “its-pea-and-ham”, but having mimicked an Italian accent once I then ended up having to pretend to be Italian for the rest of the evening)

If you’re a junior lawyer, or indeed any young professional learning a new area it can be tempting to do similar verbal “cut and paste” exercises with new vocabulary that you’ve just learned, after all - other, more competent people are using jargon in sentences - surely you should do the same?

Most industries are full of seemingly obscure phrases & law is not unique - but is the one that I went into. Here there are plenty of phrases repeated as if they somehow made sense - for instance when being advised on GDPR you’re likely to hear that you need to take “Technical and operational measures” to keep data secure. 

What does that mean?  What are those “measures”? There are some data lawyers I know who couldn’t answer that question and will simply do a “verbal cut and paste” of the response.  (You know who you are!)

But here’s where, if you’re prepared to put in a bit of work you can really make jargon like this your superpower – here’s how:

1.     Put the work in to understand what the jargon means.  Almost no one does this so this will put you at an immediate advantage.

2.     Find a way of explaining it that is unique and easy to recall (Personally I like mnemonics, but you might have another way)

3.     Use this to differentiate yourself from almost anyone in your market.

An example? with that GDPR term “technical and organisational measures” I looked into to the measures that a business can take and got these down to 7 in particular (and the mnemonic “BATFIST”):

Backups – make sure data is backed up (on another server)

Authentication – make sure you have secure passwords and ideally require a person to use more than one device (multi factor authentication)

Testing – get someone else to carry out regular tests to ensure your systems are secure

Firewall – make sure you have a firewall in place between your system and the internet

Internal controls – make sure that data is only shared with teams who need it

Software – make sure your software is regularly patched (updated)

Training – make sure your team is trained on data security

To be clear – I made this mnemonic up.  It’s not an “industry standard” or comprehensive and I’m sure many IT professionals would disagree with it – but – and here’s the thing:

I understand it. In every single training I’ve given my client has understood it too. This isn’t something they’ll have to take away and look up later. The mere fact that I can explain something that most people can’t or won’t has won me work from new clients.

You may have no interest in GDPR (I’ve heard not everyone does) but the principle is one that you can apply to any area you’re in.  If you can find a commonly used term that most people don’t understand and can explain it in a way that they can, then you have a new superpower.  If you can create a mnemonic from it that people can take away – people will treat you like a genius.

I challenge you to do this with jargon in your industry over the next week – let me know what you find!