It can be easy to slip into shorthand and so create confusion over clarity in our communications, says Dan Atkinson, head of Technical, Paradigm Norton Financial Planning.
Do you remember the joys of text messaging in the 90s/00s? Every message cost money. No animated gifs. Emojis were primitive using punctuation only like this :-O
The message above would only just have fit in your 160 character allowance. I remember tweaking sentences, using abbreviations and acronyms, carefully removing punctuation, and trying to drop letters without losing meaning. Many people took this a bit further – especially if they wanted to send messages quickly!
SIMYC PAW:( MU GTG OTB CU L8R ILY <3 :* XOXO might be quick to type out, but does it communicate meaning to you? What it says is:
Sorry I missed your call. Parents are watching (frowny face). Miss you. Got to go off to bed. See you later. I love you (heart) (kiss). Hugs and kisses.
I wonder how many of you understood that! But why am I whittering on about text messaging? These days we have WhatsApp which has a 700 character limit and you could probably fit this entire article in a single iMessage (I know someone will try :D). We don’t need to think about using acronyms when we communicate with each other. Indeed I have colleagues where we communicate largely through memes and animated gifs!
When we think about written communication the place to start is with audience. I would argue that the audience of our reports is our client. If we do this well (and highlight the appropriate risks etc) our secondary audience (compliance/FCA/FOS) will also be satisfied. Informed clients will get better outcomes. This applies to internal communications too.
George Bernard Shaw said that “the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”. In our written communication it’s often the words that we use – and particularly our love of abbreviations, acronyms, and jargon – that get in the way.
Look at financial services in general and the individual firms you work for or with. Not content with bizarre jargon (hedge funds that don’t need topiary for example!) we add in our own special acronyms. I suspect that sometimes we don’t realise we are even doing it. I’ve seen acronyms such as: FFs, CEAs, SIPPs, PPs, ATR, C4L, IC, APM, and MPS.
These probably make sense to you (and no doubt save you time), but if you visit acronymfinder.com you might find a selection of other meanings. The person reading those very familiar acronyms might think you mean something very different, like in the table the below:
Acronyms like in the text message I used earlier can save time. If both you and your audience understand them, it can be a great way of communicating IYKWIM. Just don’t forget the golden rule of communication: Know Your Audience. Ask yourself these three questions:
- Will they understand what it means?
- Will they understand slower because you used it?
- What might happen if they think it means something else?
I doubt that our internal communications are quite so jargon filled, but it’s important to challenge ourselves. There is a risk that people misunderstand what we are trying to communicate, and they take the wrong action. I think there is an even greater risk that we make people feel inferior because they don’t understand, or it takes them longer to make sense of them.
I’ve focused on our communications inside our firms, but the same lessons apply to our interactions with clients. Sometimes we use our acronyms as shorthand without considering our reader. Have you accidentally confused instead of bringing clarity? Have you left the reader feeling inferior rather than informed? As a result, have you left them unable or unwilling to take action which might lead to them achieving their financial planning goals?
WDYT? (what do you think)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This article was first published in the December 2022 issue of Professional Paraplanner.
[Main image: markus-winkler-wpOa2i3MUrY-unsplash]
