Listen, we need to talk. Pull up a chair, grab your coffee (or emotional support beverage of choice), and prepare yourself for what might be the most cathartic experience of your corporate life.
We’re officially opening what we’re calling the Acronym Cemetery, and we need your help filling it.
But first, a confession: We work for Simon Sinek, and he has a rule that drives new hires (usually the ones who used to work at big corporations) absolutely bonkers for their first month—no acronyms allowed. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
“PDP” for product detail page? Nope. Write it out, marketing guy.
“AOP” for Simon’s product The Art of Presenting? Absolutely not.
“EOD?” You better specify 5pm, pal.
We actually measured it (because what else would we do with our acronym-free time?), and we’re 79% happier as a result. That’s a real stat we definitely made up while writing this.
The Breaking Point
Recently, some of us were in a meeting with a vendor who said something along the lines of, “We need to leverage our KPIs ASAP to maximize ROI on our B2B SaaS platform while ensuring our SMEs align with the RFP requirements EOD.”
We blacked out. All of us. Simultaneously.
When we came to, we were standing in a misty graveyard, surrounded by weathered tombstones. But these weren’t ordinary graves. No, these were the final resting places of acronyms that had been worked to death in conference rooms across America.
The Grand Opening
Here’s the thing: We’ve got plots ready, shovels sharpened, and eulogies half-written. But we need your nominations for which acronyms deserve burial first.
The inaugural residents include:
COB (Close Of Business) 1997-2024
“Died of ambiguity, leaving everyone guessing when the deadline actually was”
Last words: “Is that New York time or Pacific?”
RTO (Return To Office)
2020-2024
“Died from causing anxiety in countless company-wide emails”
Last words: “Please refer to the updated hybrid work policy for your RTO schedule”
OTP (On The Phone)
1998-2024
“Succumbed to obsolescence when chat statuses made it redundant”
Last words: “BRB, OTP with client”
Send Us Your Worst
But we know you’ve suffered more. We know there’s an acronym out there that makes your eye twitch every time it lands in your inbox. The one that makes you question your career choices. The one that haunts your Slack notifications.
WE WANT THEM ALL.
Submit your most hated corporate acronyms in the comments. Tell us:
- Which acronym hurt you
- How it died (overuse? meaninglessness? passive-aggressiveness?)
- What its last words were
Feel free to submit your worst acronym offenders to [email protected]. Be specific. Be brutal. Channel all that repressed rage from years of not understanding what anyone was talking about in meetings.
Together, we can create a world where communication actually… communicates.
Because here’s the truth: This whole cemetery project might seem like a joke (and it mostly is), but it’s really about something bigger. Every acronym we bury is one less barrier between what we mean and what we say. Every spelled-out phrase is a tiny victory for clarity. Every abandoned piece of jargon brings us closer to the radical idea that work communication should actually make sense.
We believe that when people understand each other, magical things happen. Trust builds. Ideas flow. Work becomes less about decoding corporate hieroglyphics and more about doing things that matter.
So yes, we’re building a cemetery. But really, we’re clearing the path for better conversations, stronger connections, and the revolutionary notion that when someone says something at work, everyone should actually know what they mean.
The cemetery gates are open. The burial plots are ready. We just need your victims.
With love, properly labeled shovels, and a dream of jargon-free meetings,
Team Simon
P.S. – If you’re still using “low-hanging fruit,” that’s not an acronym but we’ll bury it anyway. Some things just need to die.
P.P.S. – Seriously, Simon will personally engrave the tombstones if we get enough submissions. (He probably won’t, but we’re hoping he will.)
Submit your acronyms to [email protected].
And for better ways to communicate at work, check out Simon’s Optimism Library.
