Can we please speak like normal people?

Listen to this article

1 min

By Edrine Patrick Mushabe

From Kampala to Nairobi, and from Dar es Salaam to Kigali, corporate language can turn simple ideas into complicated performances.

“We need to align expectations.”

“Can we get a 30,000-foot view?”

“Let’s operationalise the framework within the calendrical cycle.”

Translation: Let’s agree, look at the bigger picture, and please get it done this month.

Across East Africa’s increasingly interconnected business and professional world, communication matters. Organisations collaborate across borders, teams work with different professional backgrounds, and institutions must explain decisions to employees, customers and the public. Yet somewhere along the way, we have developed a habit of making ordinary ideas sound unnecessarily complicated.

We “touch base”, “close the loop”, “deep dive”, “leverage synergies” and search for the ever-elusive “low-hanging fruit”.

Then come the metaphors.

“We can’t reinvent the wheel.”

“We don’t need to boil the ocean.”

“Let’s get our ducks in a row.”

And my personal favourite: “Stop trying to mop the ocean floor while still on land.”

At this point, one begins to wonder whether the meeting is about solving a business problem or preparing for an unusual Olympic event.

Change brings even more creativity: “Let’s restructure.” Two words capable of making an entire office suddenly remember that LinkedIn exists.

Then someone announces that “we are rebuilding the airplane while it is still in flight”. Fair enough. But who is flying it?

And when everyone needs to agree, we are told that, “in the spirit of trying to sing from the same hymn book,” we should align.

The problem is not that every corporate expression is useless. Some are convenient shorthand, especially among people who understand the terminology. The trouble begins when the language becomes more complicated than the idea it is supposed to communicate.

Enough resources

Instead of saying, “We don’t have enough resources,” we say, “We need to reassess our bandwidth.” Instead of admitting, “This isn’t working,” we announce that “there is an opportunity to optimise the process”. And sometimes, after 45 minutes of discussion, everyone leaves the room still wondering what was decided.

This is more than a question of irritating vocabulary. In workplaces across the region, unclear communication can blur responsibilities, delay decisions and make people reluctant to ask questions for fear of appearing uninformed. For businesses and public institutions alike, that can come at a cost: time is wasted, expectations are misunderstood and accountability becomes harder to establish.

Good communication should help people understand what is happening, what is expected of them and what needs to happen next. It should not require a corporate dictionary. Plain language is not unprofessional.

As East African organisations pursue growth, innovation and cross-border collaboration, clarity should be treated as an asset, not a sign of limited sophistication. Professionalism is not measured by how many complicated expressions we can fit into a sentence, but by whether people understand the message and can act on it.

Perhaps the real challenge is not finding more sophisticated words, but having the confidence to use simpler ones.

Follow our WhatsApp channel for breaking news updates and more stories like this.