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Nodding your head It’s easy to spout acronyms, tell inside jokes, and use empty jargon, but oftentimes, people are just pretending to know what you mean.
H ave you ever been in one of those meetings where a topic came up or an acronym reared its ugly head and you found yourself thinking that you’re probably the only person in the room who has no idea what everyone is talking about? I’ve been there multiple times. It’s an uncomfortable feeling. It’s the joke everyone laughs at, but you don’t understand. You just politely smile and nod your head.
Bill Murphey CONTINUING ED
I saw this in action years ago while teaching a master’s level class on global logistics. My fellow instructor and I created an outstanding presentation with all kinds of facts, figures, and diagrams, and spent a day talking about logistics processes and the importance of “Tip- fid” discipline and what can happen if one doesn’t “follow the Tip-fid.” We fostered excellent dialogue with and among the two dozen graduate students. As an instructor, there’s nothing better than when you know your students “got it.” Except none of our students “got it.” The day after we returned home, I received an email from one of the students whom I had known for several years. He asked me if he could interview me as a subject matter expert for his thesis paper and then in a somewhat sheepish manner, he added at the bottom of the email: “By the way, what’s a ‘Tip- fid?’”
In this case, I was referring to Time-Phased Force Deployment Data, a standard term to describe the priority process used to move Department of Defense people and equipment. It’s a well-known term, but only if you’ve been exposed to that level of logistics, which was not the case for my students. So, who was at fault for the confusion? Why, that was me. The next time I taught that course, I spent a half hour describing the term and its meaning, and the class went so much better than the first one. Is there something you say on a regular basis that you assume everyone around you understands, but in reality they may have no clue what you’re talking about? Is there an acronym or saying you use that may have different meanings to different audiences?
See BILL MURPHEY, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER May 23, 2016, ISSUE 1153
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