Retire the language of the past.
Prior to speaking to a group, a friend walked with me and said
"Elwin, some advice; don’t use the words IT, or Enterprise here. The team will assume that you come from places that are old, big, dumb and slow - I know this is not you nor the way you work, but they don’t. When you use legacy terms you are assumed to be a legacy and we eat legacy for lunch."
This might be relevant for intrepreneurs (entrepreneurs inside of large organizations) when talking to tech focused companies, startups or equity players.
I was going to write about 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵.
But the more I thought.
This isn’t about past methodologies vs current practices, or old vs new or big vs agile.
Communication isn’t about ‘versus’, it isn’t opposition.
It is about trying to understand and be understood.
The flip side to my friends advice above would be relevant for founders, or startups talking to large organizations who might not understand tech startup language like 𝙛𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙢𝙞𝙪𝙢, 𝙛𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙨-𝙖𝙣𝙙-𝙛𝙖𝙢𝙞𝙡𝙮, 𝙈𝙑𝙋/𝙈𝘿𝙋 (though I am sure they understand 𝙖𝙘𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙝𝙞𝙧𝙚 because that is why you might be there 😀 )
Know your audience,
craft your message,
so you and your points get across.
With that said we may consider retiring some of the language of the past.
IT and Enterprise may not feel human centric nor really describe the role/functions of tech, in large orgs.
Tech concepts are complicated; we often use metaphors. Older metaphors not only may be insensitive, but also frame a poor reflection on modern architecture. 𝙈𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧/𝙎𝙡𝙖𝙫𝙚 assumes a centralized hierarchal approach which is no longer effective and doesn’t accurately describe intelligent orchestrated and choreographed interactions among peered nodes.
hmm maybe this did end up about retiring the language of the past?
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Remembering our walk 3 years ago Satish Menon
Link to original Linkedin post: https://bit.ly/3frfIkL
(worth clicking on the original linkedin Post, because the comments are amazing and often the conversation is better than the original post)