Wednesday in the Woods · episode 020
Snow excuses anymore: Yupik words carefully.
4:16youtube · Licensio, LLC
description
Where do you go when there’s nearly a foot of snow on the ground? Into it, of course! But not just any kind of snow…
On this week’s episode of #WednesdayInTheWoods, we’re talking about snow…kind of. Really, we’re talking about talking about snow - in particular, the commonly-held anecdote that “the Eskimo have more than 100 words for snow.”
We’re not really here to go deep into linguistic relativity and Sapir-Whorf. But ignoring the ebb and flow of evidence and interpretation, the gist of the idea stands: when miscommunication matters, people do best to minimize the chance of miscommunication at the root - their words.
We see this play out in business every day. And as I discuss in the video, my (least) favorite example is how we talk about roles for people. Whether you’re writing a job posting or trying to map out capabilities required for a project, it’s critical that you and your team spend the time to get on the same page about your words.
Snow is snow is snow, right? Except if you pick the wrong type of snow, you’ll never have a snowman - or your house might collapse.
Similarly, you might think that a developer is a developer is a developer. But in reality, there are as many types of developers as there are types of snow. And if you aren’t careful to understand the differences and use the right description, you’ll probably end up wasting more than just your own time.
So when you establish a program, project, or team, take a few minutes to “level-set your lexicon.” Critically, make sure people feel comfortable openly sharing their questions - or give them an anonymous way to ask without embarrassment. It may seem a little silly, but you might even keep a document or wiki page full of definitions or examples.
Organizations rise and fall on the success of their internal and external communication. And if words are the building blocks of this communication, then you’ll only be as successful as they are clear. Choose wisely.
PS: Once upon a time, in the same class I learned about Sapir-Whorf, I learned a few words of Algonquin. While I don’t think that means you should trust my pronunciation of “qengaruk” - which I reckon ought to be transcribed phonetically as something like kwen-gah-rook - I gave it my best go.
transcript
~588 words · showhide
from the human-edited captions published with the video. timestamps jump to that point in the video.
- 0:08
Hi there. Why don't you come on in to this week's episode? Oh, good afternoon there. Welcome to this week's episode of Wednesday in the Qengaruk, which, first of all, you shouldn't trust my pronunciation about. And, secondly, is, as they often say, one of the 100 words the Eskimo have for snow. Now, first of all, I think it's an Inuit word, not a Yupik, and we should refer more specifically to the people as they are there.
- 0:49
But this Whorfian idea, the idea that there are many different words for what another culture might think warrants one word, is actually pretty relevant to our lives today in business. You see, snow is almost like the word "asset." Once upon a time, if you go back 200 years, most people wouldn't think we needed many words for asset or for capital. If you asked Marx or if you asked somebody like Smith, they probably would have used one, maybe two words to capture all of the many things that we differentiate between today.
- 1:29
And I think of all of the assets that we talk about, the one that comes up most often to me, when it comes to this idea of 100 words in Eskimo for snow, is people You see, even among simple roles like analyst or business analyst, we have so many different ways of dividing up the concept. And when you talk to people who think that an analyst, is an analyst, is an analyst or developer, or is a developer or is a developer, you know, you might be in for trouble because it's exceedingly important when you actually build or hire or when you're building your capabilities for an organization that you understand what you're actually doing.
- 2:14
You pick the right kind of asset. You communicate the asset as the right type of asset. And in particular, when you're trying to obtain something like human capital that you market to and attract and end up interviewing for and hiring the right type of human capital . So just like when someone might refer to snow by a single word because they don't need to use it too often, and they don't need to differentiate between something like big old snow bank or hard snow like this, or maybe one of those crunchy stuff back here that's half ice and half snow or, well, I don't really have any of the powdery stuff right now, but we saw that on one of our last episodes with the microscope Because it matters in this context to them they use many specific words to refer to different types of snow.
- 3:10
And I encourage you to do the same thing when you need to pick a specific role to fill. Don't just say developer, don't just say analysts. Go out there, do a little research, make sure that you've got your words, your lexicon, appropriate for the task at hand. Because if you don't, you may end up regretting your choice. Just like picking between soft, crumbly or soft, flaky snow in the kind of stuff that you can actually build a house out of mattered to people who live in the north.
- 3:43
So I hope you're warmer than I am right now, and your house isn't actually made of snow. But if it is, I hope you're having fun anyway and staying warm, and we'll see you on next week's episode of Wednesday in the, well, wherever we'll be next time. See you next time!