This 2010 memo from Elon Musk, written to the SpaceX team on the theme of tackling the burgeoning use of acronyms in the business, speaks to a long-time bugbear of mine. There was, he said at the time, a creeping tendency…
'Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don’t want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees.'
You might think that this intervention demonstrates a degree of micro-management on his part, but I have some sympathy with the view that acronym-creep can do more harm than we think. Whilst sparing use might help communication, over-use can IMHO support lazy thinking, complacency and even arrogance. There's a great deal to be said for the view that humility and inclusiveness are leadership qualities that matter now more than ever (the antithesis of the traditional idea of senior leadership having all the answers – the best CEO I ever worked for didn't think twice about stopping a meeting to say when she didn't understand something someone had just said). Yet acronym-creep can promote exclusiveness (the feeling that you need to use the right language to demonstrate local knowledge) and lead us to believe that we know more than we actually do (when we use acronyms without understanding their full meaning). This kind of stuff matters because communication norms matter.
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