There is a rumor that is a Harry Truman quote. The first I heard the quote was from my manager in my first job out of college. Once upon a time, I was a Marketing Intern (wrong job for me) for a high voltage switchgear company and we were responding to an RFP from a utility company. Our proposal was very confusing and I didn’t quite understand it and was asking a lot of questions to my manager. That is when he made that quote to me– our price was so high that we had little chance of winning the bid, so he wanted to introduce ambiguity into the bid. As expected, we did not win the bid, however that quote has stuck with me ever since.
I see this playing out in everyday corporate life. Many Senior Leaders use a bunch of fluffy words and long sentences to trumpet something that nobody understands. What those sentences don’t include are the customer problem, the opportunity and the specifics of the outcomes/milestones. Who cares about all this Mumbo Jumbo if the sentences don’t convey the message or the takeaways. I am going to argue this is a symptom of not knowing the message and hence they try to distract and confuse giving credence to the Harry Truman (supposedly) quote.
Why do people do this? In my opinion, it come back to one’s own insecurities and inability to admit things openly of what they don’t know– we try to cover it up by using words that nobody understands.