Words – it’s in the Way That You Use Them (Effective Communication For IT Leaders)

Observations

Why Does This Matter?

CIOs extend beyond IT. They are organisational executives, operating in the broader, whole-of-organisation context. To excel in the role, they must communicate and present with impact to multiple forums and in multiple forms. Excellence depends not just on technical content, but also on how they present as leaders, proving their:

• Business Acumen: as the CIO role has expanded beyond infrastructure and operations, CIOs must show ability in the broader picture of business and entrepreneurship to lead successful digital transformations. In building executive relationships, influencing, and making their case, they must show their understanding of their organisation’s business and talk its language.
• Strategic Leadership and Transformation: as the IT landscape constantly evolves, CIOs must educate their organisation about emerging trends and technologies, and how to anticipate and respond to these changes. Their expression matters, as the organisation must hear and be persuaded by them. CIOs are team leaders, too, setting the example for how all ICT engages with the organisation.

For new CIOs, this means realising that communication is a major part of the role that will demand a far greater percentage of their time and focus. Much is at stake, as big investments may hang on a business case, strategy, budget submission, or report; effective communication has been described as a combat multiplier¹ in this respect. So, how might CIOs best harness the power and importance of clear communication and expression?

Who and What is the Business? (The Importance of Clarity)

CIOs have long aspired to be business-driven, aligning all initiatives to business needs. This is essential, but the way business² is used is often generic, imprecise, and may show ICT lacks business intimacy:

• Who exactly is the business? Other than for the smallest organisations, there is no single business group. So does this mean business support (finance, HR, etc.), or revenue-generating units (and which ones)? Using an umbrella term to include all of these assumes identical implications for each, which is unlikely.
• What specifically is the business issue – risk, revenue, competition, product innovation, cost, or something else?

Clarity matters. Whenever faced with a business issue, CIOs probe for the specific who or what to generate a better, sharper, more specific response.

Also, consider limiting the use of passive voice. One problem with passive voice is that it does not reveal who is accountable or must act. This is proper in some situations, but when more than the occasional sentence is passive, the overall communication becomes passive, too.

User vs Customer/Staff/Citizen (Unintended Implications)

Some words carry implications that have the opposite effect intended.

For instance, user focus and UX are inherently good things, but less so the word user alone. Many rightly recommend against it, e.g. IBRS AI responds “The term user can be reductive and impersonal, not capturing the complexity and individuality of the people interacting with your systems”³. Indeed, in everyday usage, a user uses either someone (is a manipulator) or something (is an addict). ICT professionals are desensitised to this sense, but stakeholders aren’t. As such, it erects a subtle barrier between IT and its stakeholders (staff, customers, citizens). Avoid the term – preferring to address people for who they are wherever possible.

As well as being imprecise, ICT’s references to the business imply that it isn’t a core part of the business, which is unhelpful and untrue. Worse, in the public sector and not-for-profits, the term business will jar on some staff as the organisation does not see itself that way – in such a situation, use the terms that the organisation itself uses, like department, university, or council.

Jargon, Terms of Art and Acronyms (The Value of Plain Language)

It is worthwhile to avoid most jargon, terms of art and acronyms. The very nature of jargon is to create a gap between those who know a term and those who don’t. But only mostly; sometimes it is unavoidable to dip into jargon, and indeed it is smart to adopt the jargon of the audience. However, less is more⁴.

Only consider multiple instances of jargon usage when writing to a technical audience. Otherwise, the role of IT leadership is not to educate the organisation in technology terms – think Cloud (everything -as-a-Service); Agile (Scrum and its variants, DevOps) and rapidly expanding artificial intelligence (AI) (machine learning, large language models, generative AI) – but rather to support the organisation in its use of the technology.

Consider minimising buzzwords (framings like forward-thinking, synergy, and the like), which are important-sounding, and sometimes used to impress. Buzzwords serve as useful short-cuts when communicating in the business world: the occasional well-chosen example⁵ will serve for emphasis, but using them regularly sounds try-hard and not genuine.

RAG Means Red Amber Green (The Value of Consistency)

Bolding, capitalisation, italics, and colour can powerfully enhance the written word. Used consistently they support effective communication, but unstructured use becomes meaningless and even distracting (as when capitals become SHOUTY).

As an example of colour use, a RAG status framework can help in many scenarios to highlight matters that require intervention, ensuring prompt decision-making and problem-solving. In project management, this is essential to keep projects on course (see Table 1 following). Used consistently across ICT, this practice can help to prioritise attention and response, and direct priority to the right issues. But to be most meaningful, red, for instance, must always mean that action is needed, not that something is important, or perhaps simply that PowerPoint picked it from the colour palette.

Table 1: General Purpose RAG Descriptions

In technical writing, use the same word every time to describe the same thing. Different words imply there is a different meaning. If it’s a system, don’t switch to calling it a solution for variety.

Putting Together an Action Plan

Most IT professionals don’t specialise in communications, so embedding these practices will take a little effort, and some planned actions:

• Get the External Perspective: have documents read by others, practice presentations in front of others for feedback where these are important or go to a large audience.
• Plan All Messaging: consider co-sponsorship of messages from executives who are impacted by the message’s outcome. Ensure the ICT team is familiar with the messages and is reflecting them with their peers in the organisation.
• Use Tools: in addition to a spell checker, use tools like grammar checkers and readability statistics to improve writing. Consider turning on the Inclusiveness and Formality options.
• Educate Yourself: read IBRS materials, such as Effective Report Writing, IBRS, 2004.

Next Steps

• Share some recent writing samples with a trusted associate for their frank feedback, including what you do well and what you need to improve in the way you use words.
• Select no more than two areas to address.
• Configure email, document, and presentation software settings. If you have AI (e. g. Microsoft Copilot) ask it to “review my document for readability and make suggestions”; or use Auto Rewrite.

Footnotes

1. Effective Communication is a Combat Multiplier for Business, IBRS, 2019.
2. For more on this topic, see Who is the Business?, IBRS, 2010.
3. E.g., Perform IBRS AI query “Why should I avoid the term user?”
4. To sense how IT jargon may impact others, consider this marketing jargon The Techno Marketing Jargon Dictionary, IBRS, 2007.
5. See Buzzwords and Why You Should Generally Avoid Them in Your Writing, Acrolinx, 2024 for a useful checklist when about to use buzzwords.
6. Note that some accounting formats use red for any unfavourable value.