Say what you will about Elon Musk — and there’s a lot to say — but the man has declared war on corporate speak. In a now-famous internal email to Tesla employees, Musk made a blunt demand: stop using acronyms.

“Excessive use of acronyms is a significant impediment to communication,” he wrote. “No one can actually remember all these acronyms, and people don’t want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance.”

His directive was simple: don’t use acronyms unless everyone knows what they mean. Don’t pretend. Don’t perform. Just say what you mean.

Musk’s message wasn’t about tone or style. It was about speed.

In his world, one defined by compressed timelines and existential stakes, unclear communication is a hidden tax. It slows people down, muddies accountability, and multiplies mistakes. But Musk isn’t just being provocative. What he’s calling out is something behavioral science has known for years: bureaucratic language isn’t just annoying. It’s dangerous.

Language Was Built for Trust. Not Anymore.

Humans evolved language to coordinate and build trust. In close-knit teams, shared context makes communication effortless: inside jokes, glances, half-finished sentences. It works because everyone’s in on it.

But once a group scales beyond that shared bandwidth, the same shorthand that once created efficiency starts doing the opposite.

This is one of the paradoxes of growth: the tools that worked when you were 15 people can break you at 150. Acronyms, jargon, and abstract “corp-speak” get mistaken for clarity and expertise. But they fragment alignment. They breed hesitation. They make people feel left out, or worse, too intimidated to ask for clarity.

And when people don’t understand, they stop contributing. They disengage. Decisions get slower and execution gets fuzzy.

Sound Smart, Say Nothing

Not all corporate-speak is accidental. Sometimes it’s just what Steven Pinker calls the Curse of Knowledge — the tendency to assume others know what we know, which leads to confusing, inaccessible language. Other times, it’s strategic. It’s what people use when they want to sound intelligent, competent, and in control, especially in leadership settings. You get euphemisms like:

“We’re right-sizing our resource allocation to optimize stakeholder outcomes.”

Translation: “We’re laying people off.”

This isn’t new. Ernest Hemingway famously clapped back at William Faulkner for criticizing his plain writing:

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”

Clarity is not dumbing down. Clarity is discipline. In organizations, it’s also a competitive advantage. 

The Real Cost of Miscommunication

Let’s be blunt: when communication breaks down, it’s not just annoying, it’s expensive.

A survey of 400 large companies found an average annual loss of $62.4 million per company due to inadequate communication. And that’s just the visible cost.The invisible cost is deeper: missed decisions, fractured alignment, and eroded trust.

Here’s why. Language isn’t just how we share information. It’s how we signal intent, build rapport, and coordinate action. If your team is using fuzzy, exclusionary, or overly formal language, you’re not building connection — you’re creating division.

Behaviorally, it’s intuitive. We’re wired to notice mismatch, especially when a leader says one thing and does another. That gut-check moment of “didn’t they just contradict themselves?” is cognitive dissonance. And when it happens in teams, it erodes trust fast.

When Language Becomes a Gatekeeper

Language is one of our most powerful social tools. It’s how we create shared meaning, build cohesion, and signal who’s “in.”

But when overused or misused, it backfires. Jargon becomes a filter — a way to gatekeep, not to clarify. And over time, it reinforces insider–outsider dynamics. Marketing speaks one language. Ops another. Engineering a third. Eventually, you’re not one team. You’re a collection of micro-tribes with different vocabularies, mental models, and assumptions.

The result is frustrated attempts at cross-functional collaboration and creativity. So what do we do? Simple. Say what you mean. When you do that, you not only become more efficient, you also build trust through team alignment and social cohesion.

Clarity doesn’t mean oversimplification. It means honesty, precision, and speed.

And in the organizations that will win the future - moving faster, building better, and trusting more - that’s the real differentiator. 

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