I’ve been in this industry a long time, and I’m trying to figure out if I’ve just turned into a grumpy old veteran or if acronyms have genuinely gotten out of control. Either way, it’s a problem we need to address. Stop writing and speaking in acronyms.
Meetings already require stamina. Now add an endless parade of acronyms on top of that, and it turns into a mental obstacle course. I sit there wondering when we decided it was acceptable to turn simple conversations into decoding exercises. I suspect we’ve all gotten too comfortable with AI tools writing our long-form content that we’ve now relegated ourselves to buzzword assembly artists.
Maybe we all just got lazy. Maybe we started assuming everyone on the call speaks fluent business English. They don’t. Even if they’re fluent in English, most people are not fluent in “TLA” (Three-Letter Acronyms). The moment you throw out a term they don’t recognize, you lose them. You force them into an internal monologue to figure out what you meant instead of letting them focus on the conversation.
When you say “QBR,” half the room thinks you mean “Quarterly Business Review” and the other half thinks you’re plugging some random SaaS tool. Either way, you’ve just wasted ten minutes of everyone’s mental energy that could have gone into actual problem-solving.
Research backs this up. Several recent studies have found that unfamiliar jargon and acronyms increase listener anxiety and cognitive load, forcing people to split their attention between decoding the term and trying to follow the conversation. The result is higher stress, lower comprehension, and ultimately, a conversation that leaves people feeling more confused than informed.
Cognitive load theory, developed by John Sweller, shows that when people are overloaded with unnecessary complexity (like unfamiliar acronyms) their ability to process new information drops sharply.
The use of acronyms are totally unnecessary and are actually a sign of weakness. According to Professor Adam Galinsky of Columbia Business School, “We use jargon when we’re feeling insecure to try to help us feel like we have a higher status.” (Medium)
People rarely stop the meeting to ask what an acronym means. They just nod along, hoping they can piece it together later. Usually, they can’t. What you get instead is fragmented understanding, bad decisions, and a growing sense of frustration because no one likes feeling lost.
If you want to be clear, spell it out. Every time. Not just when you “think” someone might not know it. Every time. Because the reality is, the second you make someone guess what you meant, you’ve taken them out of the conversation.
And if you are thinking, “But everyone on this call knows what I mean,” you are wrong. New employees, clients, guests: they don’t. Even the veterans might not remember what your internal jargon stands for while they are juggling five other projects.
Meetings should not feel like a game of corporate Bingo. Throwing acronyms around does not make you sound smarter. It makes you sound lazy. If you care about real collaboration, speak like you want to be understood. Say the full phrase first. Then, if it is absolutely necessary, mention the acronym after.
If you want to actually get things done in meetings instead of just performing like you are busy, start by speaking like a human being.
The next time you are about to drop an “OKR” or “NPS” into a conversation, stop and ask yourself: Am I communicating, or am I making people work to understand me?
If your meetings were built for real understanding, not corporate showmanship, what would they sound like?
