Reflecting on how AI reads written communication has wider implications for IROs
Most investor relations officers I know are expert communicators. They tend not to rely on jargon or buzzwords to tell their stories – in fact, most of their stakeholders can see through any obfuscation, or will pick up on any woolly language as a negative indicator.
I write this from the sidelines of the IR Impact Forum – AI & Technology in London, where experts have spent the day discussing how digital tools can boost their productivity. But another consistent theme has been the buy and sell side’s use of AI to read between the lines of an executive’s speech, to discern what is really happening at a company underneath the buzzwords.
One of the strongest messages from this morning’s discussion was that whatever you put out in the market, AI tools will pick up on. Being careful around the language you employ to do this is more important than ever.
It put me in mind of a very entertaining piece in the Wall Street Journal, where readers were invited to share the corporate jargon they disliked most strongly.
One that stood out in particular to me was Eric Bruskin’s umbrage with the phrase ‘space’, used to mean ‘sector or industry’.
‘Spaces are well-defined and venerable terms in physics and math,’ he adds. ‘If you don’t know what phase space or vector space is, then stay away! And if you do know, then don’t consign space to jargon space.’
That’s one that IROs may take to heart, but from what I’ve seen they tend to be pretty specific about their terminology in this sphere – though I have been gently lectured on the differences between ‘sector’ and ‘industry’ before by interviewees.
Another hated phrase that seems relevant to IR folk is ‘negative growth’, nominated by Greg Summy of Virginia Beach. ‘This one is tough to beat,’ he told the Journal. ‘Analysts like to say, All quarters were good for Acme Widgets, except for Q3, when they experienced negative growth in revenue.’
That seems like a tough one to replace – what’s the alternative? Talking about ‘regression’ or ‘shrinkage’?
However, some words I think are safe from being pruned by our AI overlords. Diana Matthews from Whiteville thinks that ‘stakeholders’ should be purged from the lexicon. ‘It makes me think of vampire slayers,’ she adds. While I agree with the powerful imagery, I think the ship has sailed on this perennially useful word.
It all serves as a helpful reminder that we write (and more broadly communicate) for the sake of our audience. Our word choices should reflect that – whether those words are read by humans, machines or someone else entirely.
What do you think? Are there jargon words you’d like to purge from your CEO’s usage? Or maybe your investors’? Let us know here.
