Plain language is how clarity becomes real
Most mission statements, goals, and strategic outcomes are written by committee. You can tell. They’re padded with modifiers and adjectives. They sound impressive. No one really understands them.
“Foster a collaborative, innovative, and customer-centric culture.” What does that actually mean? What would someone observe if it were true? When would you know it’s working?
Vague language creates vague execution. Teams spend energy debating what things mean instead of doing things that matter. Leaders pretend alignment exists when it’s really just polite agreement masking confusion.
Plain language does something different. It forces clarity on you. Because you can’t hide behind impressive words. You have to say what you actually mean.
This matters more in small and medium businesses than anywhere else. You don’t have slack resources to absorb misalignment. You can’t afford entire departments working in different directions. When ambiguity costs a percentage point of productivity across a small organization, it’s not a rounding error.
It shapes your competitive position.
The shift is straightforward. Take a goal your organization is working toward. Write it the way you’d explain it to someone in the business who’s skeptical and practical. No jargon. No hedging. Observable. Measurable. Specific enough that someone could actually track it.
Instead of “improve collaboration,” say: “teams meet their delivery dates without needing senior management to step in.” You can track that. You can see whether it’s true. You can ask what’s stopping it if it’s not.
Instead of “enhance innovation,” ask what specific innovation would actually change your competitive position. A new product line? Faster speed to market for existing products? More process improvements? Name it. Make it observable.
This isn’t a copywriting exercise. It’s a thinking exercise. Because the act of translating vague intentions into clear results forces you to confront what you actually want and whether the work you’re doing is connected to it.
Most organizations skip this step. They assume clarity exists when it doesn’t. They’d rather move forward than spend time on language. But that “time on language” is actually the highest-leverage work you can do. It prevents months of scattered execution.
One practical approach: take your strategic goals. For each one, go around the table with your team—this includes both leadership and the people who’ll be responsible for achieving the results—and ask everyone to write down what success looks like. Most organizations get three or four different answers.
That gap is where alignment breaks.
Then edit ruthlessly toward plain language. Not bland language. Specific language. Language that says something about your reality and what needs to change.
Once you’ve got that, the next discipline is cascading those results. A company-level result needs to translate into department-level results, then team-level results. At each level, ask the same question: what specific change at this level would contribute to the result above it? This cascading creates line of sight from daily work all the way up to strategic intent.
Once clarity exists at each level, everything else becomes easier. Measurement follows naturally. Priorities clarify. Teams move in coherent directions. It costs you nothing. It saves you everything.