The Scene: Ash, Ash, and a Single Spiral
Max J.P. is kneeling in the center of what used to be a 46-person conference room. The air still carries the acrid, metallic tang of melted server racks and scorched mahogany. His canvas coat is dusted with grey ash, and as he traces the soot pattern along the eastern wall, he ignores the 6 executives hovering in the hallway. They are whispering about ‘downside risks’ and ‘mitigating brand exposure.’ Max doesn’t care about their brand; he cares about the 16 liters of accelerant that likely started near the ventilation duct.
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He reaches into his pocket, fingers brushing against a long, curled strip of orange peel. Earlier this morning, he had managed to peel a Navel orange in a single, unbroken spiral.
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Unbroken Spiral
It was a moment of rare, tactile precision in a world that increasingly feels like it is made of wet cardboard and vague promises.
The Linguistic Fortress
Inside the scorched room, the whiteboard somehow survived. On it, written in red marker that refused to melt, are the words: ‘Leverage core competencies to operationalize a paradigm shift.’ Max looks at the phrase and feels a familiar, dull headache. He considers the possibility that the fire was a mercy killing. If he had to listen to one more person describe a ‘best-in-class, blue-sky solution,’ he might have ignited the match himself.
People use these words because they are afraid of the vacuum. If you admit you have no idea how to fix a declining revenue stream, you are vulnerable. If you say you are ‘pivoting toward a synergistic, data-driven ecosystem,’ you sound like you have a map. Even if the map is blank.
Reality Is Unpretentious
I suspect that we have collectively reached a point where saying is mistaken for doing. We treat the construction of a deck containing 126 slides as a victory, regardless of whether the slides contain a single actionable truth. In my 26 years of investigating fire causes, I have learned that reality is remarkably unpretentious. A wire shorts because it is frayed. A fire spreads because there is oxygen and fuel. There is no ‘leveraging’ of the heat; there is only the heat.
Glossary Required
No Jargon Used
Today, however, admitting a mistake is seen as a failure of ‘narrative control.’ We would rather burn the building down than say, ‘I don’t know.’
[The abstraction of language is the death of accountability.]
There is a specific kind of violence in the way we use ‘bandwidth’ to describe human exhaustion or ‘headcount’ to describe the firing of 506 living souls. It strips the humanity from the consequence. We are currently witnessing a retreat from the world of tangible things.
The Nursery School Standard
In my line of work, if I used jargon to explain why a nursery school burned down, I would be a pariah. If I told the parents we were ‘re-evaluating the safety paradigm in a post-combustion environment,’ they would rightfully want to tear me apart. They want to know if the door was locked or if the alarm was broken. They want clarity.
ASK: Door Locked?
Simple, tangible question.
JARGON: Paradigm Re-eval
Complexity used as a shield.
Corporate leaders should be held to the same standard of linguistic honesty. We need to stop ‘circling back’ and start answering the question. We need to stop ‘drilling down’ and start looking at the floor.
Clarity and the Natural Core
This brings me to the concept of the synthetic versus the natural. Much of our corporate language is synthetic-lab-grown, reinforced with buzzwords, and designed for shelf-life rather than nutrition. We see this mirrored in many industries, where the focus has shifted toward complex, manufactured solutions for problems that often require a more grounded, natural approach.
There is an inherent value in things that are what they say they are. Whether it is a fire investigation or a health supplement like
Glycopezil, the philosophy remains the same: clarity, transparency, and a reliance on what is real rather than what is merely ‘positioned.’
The Dual Nature of Value
Synthetic Solution
Designed for shelf-life.
Natural Approach
Reliance on what is real.
When we strip away the synthetic fog, we are left with the core of the issue. Sometimes that core is uncomfortable, but it is always more useful than a lie.
The Mirror Shoes
Max J.P. walks over to the hallway and faces the executives. One of them, a man in a suit that costs more than Max’s truck, steps forward. ‘Max, we need a high-level overview of the trajectory of the incident so we can begin the stakeholder alignment process.’
Max looks at the man’s shoes. They are polished to a mirror finish. There is not a speck of ash on them. He realizes that this man doesn’t actually want to know why the room burned. He wants a phrase he can put in an email to 1006 employees that makes the fire sound like a ‘strategic restructuring of physical assets.’
Max’s Reality
“The fire started because you overstuffed the server closet and the cooling fans failed.”
Executive Hope
Hoping for ‘Disruptive Thermal Events.’
‘Max’s explanation is too simple to be useful for a press release. It leaves no room for ‘pivoting.”
I reckon we are afraid of simplicity because it offers no place to hide. If the problem is simple, then the failure is simple. And if the failure is simple, then the person responsible is easily identified. Jargon is the smoke we blow into the room to make sure no one can see who left the stove on.
Driving Away from the Smoke
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Max J.P. leaves the building, passing 16 fire trucks still parked on the curb. He sits in his truck and pulls out the orange peel spiral. He holds it up to the light. It is perfect. It is a single, clear, unbroken thing. He imagines a world where we talked like this peel looks. No jagged edges of ‘deliverables,’ no bitter pulp of ‘low-hanging fruit.’ Just the thing itself, laid bare.
He will tell the truth about the fire, even if the truth doesn’t have a high-level overview. He will let the soot speak for itself, because unlike the VP at the whiteboard, the soot has nothing to sell.
