InVisibleLight

Say What You Mean Part 4: Leverage

20th July, 2010 - Posted by janebeard - No Comments

Business people – especially the ones in marketing and HR – looooove the word leverage. Their talks are full of how we’ll leverage assets, leverage people, leverage ideas, even how they’ll leverage the competition.

Some of these speakers love the word leverage so much that, when I ask them what word they would use instead, if they were talking about the same topic at a dinner party, they look at me like I have asked which way is up. “Leverage,” they reply.

I’m glad we don’t get invited to those dinner parties.

But since most of us DO get invited to those presentations, listen up: Chop “leverage” right out of your vocabulary. Aim for something much more down to earth, and closer to what you really mean by “leverage.”

Leverage can mean lots of different things:

- make the most of
- do more with less
- make lemonade out of lemons
- be as smart and tactical as possible when pitting assets against needs
- stretch our people as thinly as possible
- try to get another business unit/manager/employee to do part of our job for us
- acquire power we can use over someone else
- force others into a situation they wouldn’t choose for themselves

…and on and on. You’ll notice that not all of these more specific definitions are positive. That may be why “leverage” has become popular in some quarters: it lets you cloak less desirable motive as something benign. But most people like it because it sounds, in the words of someone we once coached, “smart. It’s an SAT word.”

Your job isn’t to sound smart. It’s to change us, out there in the audience. So decide what meaning you intend to convey with “leverage.” Then use those words instead of the “L” word.