This week I finished reading the Elon Musk biography written by Ashlee Vance. Elon is the creator (or co-creator) of companies like Tesla, Paypal, SpaceX and Solar City, a kind of combination between Edison, Ford, Howard Hughes, Steve Jobs and a touch of Iron Man, that destroys the status quo of everything that Whether we are talking about automobiles, energy, space travel or e-banking, it touches.
In one of the chapters of the book, a story is related where Elon was directly involved to solve a serious internal communication problem at SpaceX, which consisted of the abuse, by his employees, in the creation and use of acronyms, which are those words formed from initials, like IBM, or by joining part of two words, like Bit (Binary digit).
Next I am going to share the email that Elon sent to all SpaceX employees where he clearly explains why we must stop creating acronyms. Yes, it is true that putting a neologism every two words is very Cool-Trendy-SiliconValley, but the truth is that it ends up unnecessarily complicating communication between people.
In this sense I remember a case where we worked with a multilatina company and we created a platform in its Internal Social Network in which employees could upload all those expressions that they heard every day and that they did not understand very well.
The slogan was for other people in the company to write the definition of those terms. Sure, those people were the ones who used them. So we ended up amassing a kind of glossary with more than 130 terms, which revealed that we were in serious trouble. 130 was a very large number.
The next step was to curate terms. On the one hand, we left those that it was almost impossible to say otherwise and, on the other hand, we replaced those that could be done with simpler versions. (We also had to filter some "jokes", for example some said they did not understand what "LTA" was and another defined it as "Attractive Rear Location". Originality in its purest form).
With this "collaborative glossary" project we demonstrated several things: that there was an abuse of acronyms, acronyms, technicalities and foreign words; that most people did not dare to say that they did not understand many of the words they heard every day; and that it was possible to replace many of them with terms more accessible to the majority without losing specificity or fidelity (of course, we did not fall into the exaggeration of asking them to say "click here with the mouse" instead of "click with the mouse ”).
Now yes, here I transcribe the email of Elon Musk and his recommendation to improve Internal Communication in a company that has the small mission that one day we can live on Mars.
“At SpaceX there is a chilling tendency to use made-up acronyms. Overuse of these kinds of acronyms is a major obstacle to communication, and maintaining good communication as we grow up is absolutely crucial. From an individual point of view, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if 1000 people dedicate themselves to inventing them, over time we will have a huge glossary that we will have to explain to new employees. No one can remember all those acronyms, and people don't like to look stupid in a meeting, so they just keep quiet. The situation is particularly tough for new hires.
If this habit does not end immediately, I will take drastic measures; I've already given enough notices over the years.
So unless I personally approve of an acronym, it should not be added to the SpaceX glossary. If there is an acronym that can be reasonably justified, it should be removed, as I requested in the past.
For example, there should be no “HTS” (horizontal test stand) or “VTS” (vertical test stand) designations for test positions. They are particularly stupid, because they contain unnecessary words. A position in our test area is obviously a "test" position. Plus VTS3 has 6 syllables versus “tripod,” which only has 3, so the annoying acronym takes longer to pronounce than the name.
The key test for an acronym is to ask yourself whether it helps or hurts communication. An acronym that most SpaceX engineers already know, such as GUI, can be used perfectly. It's also okay to make up some acronyms or abbreviations from time to time, as long as I approve of them, for example MVac and M9 instead of Merlin IC-Vacuum and Merlin IC-Sea Level… but they have to be the least. "
This was the email from Elon, FYI. The tone in which he writes it, WTF, certainly leaves a lot to be desired, but the point he makes is interesting. I hope ASAP can analyze what happens with acronyms in your company and OMG hopefully it is not very serious. W8, LOL and CYA.
