Stop Inventing Acronyms: One of the Easiest Ways to Reduce Friction as You Scale

Every growing company eventually creates its own language.

And that’s usually when communication starts slowing down.

A simple way to keep your business moving at top speed as it scales is to invent as few acronyms as possible.

Yes, some acronyms are fine.

Use the industry-standard ones everyone already understands.

But don’t invent internal acronyms for everything.

And for the love of God, don’t reinvent them every year.

Growing companies rely heavily on:

• contractors
• freelancers
• agencies
• consultants
• implementation partners

Every unnecessary acronym becomes another thing those people need translated before they can do productive work.

It creates friction throughout:

• New hires need decoding.
• Cross-functional teams hear different meanings.
• Customers get confused.
• Outside partners get lost.
• Meetings slow down because nobody wants to admit they have no idea what “QBR-MX2” means.

The worst part is most acronyms save little time.

You save two seconds saying it.

The company loses hours explaining it.

I’ve had a long-term enterprise client that shall remain nameless that loves inventing new acronyms every year.

Not improving old ones.

Not standardizing them.

Inventing entirely new ones!

Every April felt like onboarding into a new dialect.

Clarity scales better than cleverness.

The fastest-moving companies I’ve worked with tend to communicate in painfully clear language:

• plain English
• consistent terminology
• standard industry language
• minimal decoding required

If I sound a little frustrated, I am. I love to move fast. Plain language helps me do that.

It will help your business move fast, too, because I’m not the exception. I also bank time to study new client acronyms. Which adds cost to my clients and me. Multiply that by your whole staff and other 3rd parties. It costs real money.

Unfortunately, this is another value only leadership can drive home. 

The simplest way to make this stick long-term is to make it a cultural value and reinforce it regularly.

It might be hard to measure but it’s worth doing anyway. It’s just common sense.