How to Create a Company Dictionary

keep your team on the same language page

Language fascinates me. It’s a massively complex system where we as participants choose to agree that this assemblage of letters means something.

Your organization has its own language. Perhaps not as fully formed as Tolkien’s Elvish, but you use words in a way that’s specific to you and likely generate totally new words, terms, or acronyms that only have meaning within the context of your organization.

It’s something that most of us take for granted if we’ve been at the same organization for a while — and notice immediately as a barrier if we’re new.

The language barrier can keep people from understanding what’s going on or could put them in a position of thinking they’re saying the same thing when, in fact, they’re saying something totally different. No one wants to admit they don’t know (we’ve all been there) because they don’t want to be the odd one out who doesn’t get it.

One way to avoid miscommunication is to create a company dictionary. Yes, really.

It’s actually one of the first things I do when I start working with a new team. As I review their materials, survey their stakeholders, and talk to their leadership, I pull out words that are either totally unique or are being used in a specific way in their lexicon. I need to understand them so I can effectively merge into their world.

You can make your dictionary in something as simple as a Google Doc or in something more complex like a knowledge base. For some of you, the list of words will be short. For others, it could be quite long. Length isn’t important — clarity is important, so do what you need to do to make the meaning clear.

By creating an accessible and preferably searchable list of words and acronyms with definitions, you’ll help keep everyone on the same page.

Here’s the Do List

1. Pay attention to the emails and messages you write for a week. Make note of the words and acronyms you use that are specific to your company (yes, company abbreviations count).
2. Take the words you’ve found and start a list.
3. Reach out to other members of your organization — in this case, I’d start with those in leadership positions — and ask them to look at your list and contribute other words they think should be there.
4. Now write short definitions that match what you think the words mean.
5. Go back to your team and have them upvote definitions they think are accurate and leave comments on definitions that aren’t quite right. Language is a shared system, so you need to come to an agreement on what the words mean.
6. Once you have everything set, share your dictionary with your entire team. Wherever it lives, it needs to be easy for everyone to access.
7. Include these words in your onboarding process so new team members can communicate within your world more quickly.
8. Assess other places the definitions — or links to the dictionary — would provide value.

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Originally published at https://www.matterlogic.co on August 16, 2021.