Explain It Wrong

Pick something you explain often. Your job, your project, a concept you teach, what your company does.

Now explain it again, but you are banned from using the five words you would normally reach for. Write those five words down first so you cannot cheat.

If you are in marketing, you have just lost "brand," "strategy," "audience," "message," and "engagement." Good. Those words have been doing your thinking for you.

The explanation you end up with will be longer and clumsier and much, much clearer. Jargon is compression, and compression only works if the other person has the same decoder you do. Most of the time they do not, and both of you politely pretend otherwise.