Using Jargon to get ahead as a Product Manager

As a Product Manager, I want to speak the language of my audience, to extract max value as possible out of the interaction.

Language - and specifics of words- are a gift and a curse to any community.

On the positive, it grounds all participants on a uniform means of communication. In the United States, if I yell “Call 9-1-1” everyone around me knows exactly what the stakes and desired actions of such a statement are. It's a gift of the human species to be able to shortcut these kinds of ideas.

On the negative side, language can be used for gatekeeping, obfuscation, and other general BS that does nothing but help a certain select few benefit over others. There’s a reason why contracts are not in plain English - if everyone knew the specifics of every contract they signed, riots would ensue. Think of record labels. 

 Y'all throwin' contracts at me

You know that n****s can't read

-Kanye West, New Slaves

Kanye has famously gone HAM in fighting the labels that snuck in terms that HE CAN NEVER RETIRE per the terms of the “Language” of his initial record deal.

Kanye West’s record contract says that he can never retire

Not cool EMI, very not cool.

With any tool used for both good and evil, it behooves us to adopt into our arsenal to get ahead. Every industry has its own unique “Jargon” to which we can use the phenomenon to our advantage as Product Managers. The PM’s role is to interface with every possible individual which could affect their product - developers, Sales, the users themselves, marketing, customer success, etc etc. The goal in any of these engagements is to often extract as much relevant data as we can to orient our next step. Going back to my opening statement, how can we do this efficiently?

By using the language of our audience. This allows us to get to the the the root of actual the problem at hand in the quickest possible fashion.

Let’s dig in on exactly how.