Buzz(words): A common understanding.

The Workshop
Aug 31, 2018 · 4 min read

For as long as I’ve been in the tech industry, buzzwords have been the bane of my existence. My issue with buzzwords is the common misinterpretation of meaning. Over time, like the old telephone game some of us played as a child, a simple phrase can change quickly as it’s passed among us. Misunderstanding, opines and declarations twist the definition of a buzzword for individuals and eventually for groups of people.

The purpose of “what’s the buzz(word)” was two-fold:

  1. To get people involved in the process and create some buzz for The Workshop (& being the new hire, I was drawing people in to meet me).
  2. Start breaking down & demystifying buzzwords so we can develop a common understanding of them throughout the organization.

The approach:

At The Workshop, we used our chalk wall as an opportunity to start creating a common understanding around buzzwords, those that are common and often overused. With help from our summer student, we:

  • created a list of buzzwords
  • biweekly we posted 2 words on our chalk wall
  • updated our placard explaining the intent of the exercise
  • used intranet postings to try to draw people to the office
  • would goad people in participating as they walked past
  • made promise of prizes and incentives at the end of the program

Below are photos shortly after we kicked-off our buzzword breakdown:

A look at the wall. Signs, placards & whatever it took to get attention (including flowers)

Incentive:

On August 31st, 2018, “What’s the buzz(word)” ended. We rewarded our participants with a mug, small gift and a big batch of appreciation. Originally, we made promise of a raffle but the intention all along was to reward everyone who contributed to the wall. In doing so, this group showed courage in stepping up and providing their definitions of words so commonly misused. We all knew we weren’t textbook perfect on our answers but we were willing to post what the words meant to us. We had some great entries and the results show that these words are fuzzy, ambiguous and too general to have the same meaning across the board.

We started with what we thought were easy words then slowly moved on. ‘Innovation’ & ‘Enterprise’ in week one and ending with ‘Organic’ & ‘Influencer’.

Below are some pictures of our employees receiving the Innovation Office’s appreciation for helping to build a common understanding.

A small sampling of our contributors & frequent flyers receiving buzz-rewards on our final day.

Some words we broke down:

  • innovate & enterprise
  • digital transformation & agile
  • collaboration & platform
  • engagement & design-thinking
  • organic & influencer

Side-effects:

Because of our organizational culture, those that could find the time to participate did so willingly, with no fear of being looked down upon for “getting it wrong” — there was no wrong, there was only our individual interpretations which was the purpose of the exercise.

As a bonus, we were also able to identify those in the organization that we can obviously turn to for comedic relief. For example, the word “enterprise” had some clear associations to the car rental company as well as the SS Enterprise:


What’s next for the wall:

We will start using the chalk wall for other programs including one of our employee’s ideas — expand buzzwords to include the breakdown of acronyms.

Our organization works across several industries (electricity, telecom, green energy, etc.) so the acronyms are abound everywhere & everyday. For new people like me, it’s overwhelming and I’m forced to just nod my head instead of interrupting each and every conversation multiple times. A small part of the chalk wall will be used to run “Acronym-ity” which will run similarly to buzz(words).

Part of the wall will be used to provide updates on “What’s in The Workshop” as well as a schedule activities and so we can encourage people to start coming “off desk” and into the office in short stints to watch, participate in and learn about the approach & technology behind our internal & external innovation. We will try to structure these in fun & engaging ways with themes including Friday Geek Retreat, Graph Camp, Map Camp and the continued delivery of a monthly Tech Talk Tuesday.

We are also planning to use the wall for Kanban to communicate what our focus is. To learn more on Kanban, here’s a great LifeHacker article. This method isn’t just for innovation or tech, you can actually use it to organize your day to day both in the office and at home.

Thanks for reading about our buzz(word)s experiment at The Workshop (A GSU Project).

Follow The Workshop on Twitter or check out the YouTube channel.

Paul Giroux is the Innovation Officer at The Workshop / Greater Sudbury Utilities.

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