How do we call any plan longer than two slides? Strategy.
How do we call anything that appears to be new, even when it is not? Innovation.
How do we call any process that would require too much effort to explain precisely? Transformation.
The communications market has learned to use words that once carried a certain weight, but that have completely lost their evocative power. We see them in claims, emails, posts, service offers. And yet they rarely mean the same thing.
Words have lost their weight. What they express has become vague and often uncertain. A problem that does not only affect the dictionary, but everyone: because every problem always begins with language. And with such uncertain governance of words, semantic inflation erodes organizations’ very ability to think precisely.
Semantic inflation
Words, like currencies, lose value through excessive circulation. When a word is used to indicate too many things, it stops indicating any one thing precisely. The mechanism is identical to monetary inflation: the more units you put into the system, the less each one is worth. The result is that communicating something with that word requires more and more words around it. Until reaching the point where no combination can restore the weight that term originally carried.
“Innovation” is the first victim of this process. Schumpeter, in 1942, identified it as the force that produces creative destruction: a process that revolutionizes the economic structure from within, eliminating what is obsolete and generating what is genuinely new. A definition that implies real discontinuity, measured risk, structural transformation.
Today “innovation” describes anything people want to present as slightly different from what came before: a new app feature, a packaging redesign, a more colourful dashboard. The word has lost its ability to distinguish what truly changes from what merely simulates change. The damage is operational. When “innovation” means everything, no investment in R&D can be evaluated for what it truly is. The measuring standard has been removed.
The sustainability case
“Sustainable” has undergone the same process. The term was originally used to describe the ability of an activity to meet the needs of the present without compromising those of future generations. A definition that implied measurement, reporting, and real choices between profit and environmental impact.
After twenty years of indiscriminate use, it has become a marketing attribute applicable to anything: bottles with green caps, corporate strategies without a single verifiable environmental KPI, communications that promise commitment without documenting results.
The market noticed the problem, and in 2022 research by the European Commission documented that 56% of European consumers had encountered misleading environmental claims. The legislative response was the Green Claims Directive approved in 2024, which requires companies to substantiate every environmental statement with certified data. In Italy, the AGCM has already sanctioned major brands for the imprecise use of these terms.
A problem that began with language, precisely.
What happens in the brain
Cognitive linguistics has documented a precise mechanism: the brain uses language to think, as well as to communicate. The distinctions that exist in the language of a person or organization are the same distinctions that person or organization can make in reality.
When an organization uses “strategy” indiscriminately to describe a five-year plan, a six-month plan, and a list of priorities for the next quarter, it is thinking poorly. The same word used for three different things produces the same cognitive response to three situations that would require radically different responses.
Research on organizational ambiguity has precisely documented the operational consequences.
The first concerns the way internal language shapes decision-making processes by making them longer. This happens because when the key words in a process do not define a precise boundary, every decision takes more time and creates more friction. Organizations with imprecise internal language spend a significant share of meeting time on alignment activities that produce no value.
The second concerns accountability: if “responsible” means different things depending on who uses it, no one can be held accountable for anything with precision. Clarity of language is the precondition for accountability.
After all, you cannot measure anything you do not know how to define.
The third and final consequence concerns external credibility.
As seen with the term Sustainability, the average consumer has now developed an automatic cognitive response of distrust toward corporate communication that uses inflated terms. “Authentic”, “transparent”, “quality” have become warning signs. The devaluation of an industry’s language transfers to every brand operating within that industry, including those that had used those words rigorously.
In the beginning was the Word
Linguistic rigour is a necessary act.
Precisely defining what “strategy” means within an organization means creating a system in which decisions can be classified by level, responsibilities assigned according to the type of choice, and results evaluated against shared and verifiable criteria.
Whoever governs the words of an organization governs the quality of its thinking. Governs the consistency of its decisions and the weight of what it says in the market and internally.
Language is the supporting structure of every reality. Without precise foundations, every communication architecture stands only while the context remains favourable. The moment it stops being so, it collapses.
New Connections (FAQ)
How do I know whether we really understand each other in the company or whether we are just pretending?
With a revealing exercise. Take the most frequently used word in internal documents and ask ten people in different positions to define it in one sentence. If the definitions diverge, the organization has a linguistic governance problem that precedes and produces all other alignment problems. The diagnosis is immediate. Correcting it requires structure.
Does semantic inflation only concern external communication?
The more serious damage is internal. Deteriorated external communication is visible and measurable. The loss of internal linguistic rigour is slower, more pervasive and more costly. It acts on decision-making processes, accountability and the ability of every level of the organization to understand what is expected of it. An organization that has lost internal rigour cannot build credible external communication. The credibility of what is said outside depends on the precision of what is governed inside.
What can I do starting tomorrow to prevent my colleagues from misunderstanding my instructions?
Start by defining the terms that are used most and defined least. Every organization has an operational vocabulary made up of the words that circulate most frequently in relevant decisions. Making that vocabulary explicit, precisely defining every term and building a system in which that precision is applied consistently is the starting point. Governance of language is governance of the organization.
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