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A thought-terminating cliché limits conversation by capturing a complex (but potentially debatable) subject within a reductive term or phrase. Merlin Mann references this idea in episode 164 of Back to Work when discussing curiosity and buzzwords.

Thought-terminating clichés can be used to avoid discourse on a subject: by never unpacking the components of an idea that are debatable, those components go unexplored. They can also be exploited to veil ignorance or illogic—the speaker can state the complex term and allow the implication to have impact without contextualizing/explaining it while the intimidated audience shies away from critique or questioning.

This explanation makes the phenomena seem villainous, but many of us are prone to committing these crimes—through buzzwords! Buzzwords are terms that catch on because they represent something exciting to a discourse. Then, because they’re popular, they get used frequently, by many people. Because they are somewhat novel, these different uses attach slightly different meanings to the same word. Eventually the buzzword’s overused (reducing the novelty, and therefore the impact of its meaning) and/or overloaded with meaning.

Most of our buzzwords were real things at one point (and sometimes they still are). When buzzwords are used effectively they allow a good conversation to move faster between speakers who have the same mental models about the buzzwords.¹

Sometimes, however, buzzwords are said to represent concepts that aren’t fully understood by everyone in the conversation. When my meaning of the word “design thinking” differs from yours, but we both refer to design thinking in conversation nonetheless, we can run into trouble.

In these situations, buzzwords obfuscate the ideas we’re actually talking about. In my experience, we also know when we’re using buzzwords. We can guess at when others are using them, too. As a result, the conversation loses meaning, and we lose trust in the conversation.

Buzzword meaning space. The three colored shapes are three different meanings attached to the same buzzword.

# Dealing with buzzwords

So what can we do?

Well, the easy thing to do is to clarify. When you use a phrase with many potential interpretations, try to clarify how you’re using the phrase. When others use words that may have multiple meanings, ask specific questions about what they actually mean. This clarification might seem like extra work, but it only needs to happen when terms are first invoked—and it’ll prevent lost time and energy due to the consequences of thought-termination later on.

More importantly, though, we should try to avoid thought-terminating clichés altogether. Take time to break down the concepts you’re talking about in concrete terms. Explain them in ways you haven’t heard before to avoid relying on trite metaphors and anecdotes. If you can really get at what you mean, your language will be minimally re-interpretable: that is, it should be near-impossible to understand your explanations differently from how you intended.

As a result, your communication will become more impactful. The conversations you participate in will have more novelty, too, making it more exciting to discuss the ideas you’re sharing. This may result in more buzzwords emerging, but that’s okay—use the same approach to break those down, too.

See the excellent Notes on the Role of Leadership and Language in Regenerating Organizations for more on this. ↩︎

Student Acquisition, Engagement, and Retention: Analogies from tech startups

Published Jan 23, 2020

a16z is a podcast from Andreesen Horowitz, one of the leading venture capital firms in the US. Their portfolio has included Airbnb, BuzzFeed, Facebook, Twitter, and many many other big companies—they know what they’re doing!

Two recent episodes on the podcast feature Andreesen Horowitz general partners, Andrew Chen and Jeff Jordan (some of the people who make investment decisions). They are interviewed by host Sonal Chokshi about how to think about user (or customer) acquisition and user engagement and retention. (You should also be able to get these episodes using any given podcasting app, searching for a16z, and grabbing the two recent episodes titled The Basics of Growth.)

I’ve listened to these episodes a couple of times since they came out a week ago. There’s a lot of terminology and concepts to parse—they explain it all well, but it took me a couple of tries to wrap my head around all of it. Given what I’ve come to learn so far, though, is that the two episodes seem like a (free!) one-oh-one masterclass in growing or scaling any given initiative. Despite being less than an hour long in total, the conversation goes way beyond “number of users”. Andrew, Jeff, and Sonal dive deep into the kind of patterns we should hope to see (and find ways to encourage) in order to garner genuine growth, engagement, and retention patterns. It is super sophisticated while still being kinda simple.

That said, they’re talking about startups, customers, and technology-driven businesses. Applying those lessons to initiatives in public post-secondary—co-curricular leadership development programs, in my case—is not straightforward.

So, that’s the challenge: how do we generalize their insights into the world of post-secondary student services? Here I explore that question with more questions. There’s probably no simple answer for these, but thinking about these concepts could deepen how we grow (and evaluate the growth of) post-secondary services.

Question 1: Lifetime Value vs. Lifetime Impact? The first episode focuses on user acquisition. The analogy for us is when students first use our services, tools, or go to their first event or program. Jeff and Andrew describe organic growth—word of mouth-type acquisition—and inorganic growth (paid ads and other campaigns). They talk a lot about the tension between the “cost” of acquiring users and the lifetime value (LTV) of a given user.

How should we think about these ideas in student services? “Student Acquisition Costs” have a direct parallel. Is there a useful analogy for LTV? (I.e., “Degree/Career Impact”?) The implication is that acquiring certain students might cost more, or at least demand different strategies, but have a greater impact.

Question 2: Semesterly Active Users? The podcasters reference a variety of “active user” metrics: Daily Active Users (DAU), Monthly Active Users (MAU), last-seven (L7) and last-twenty eight (L28)… What is a useful and realistic “active user” metric for post-secondary student services? We don’t actually want our students to use all of our services daily. As the podcasters put it, there’s a certain ideal cadence to the way they should use our services. But what is that cadence, and how do we ensure we’re meeting it?

Question 3: Network effects? Jeff, Andrew, and Sonal talk about the “network effect” in both episodes. This is the concept that a service becomes more valuable/powerful the more users it has. Is there an analogy to the services we’re already running, and are we taking advantage of it? Or, are we missing an opportunity to build in a network effect or similar positive acquisition, engagement, or retention feedback loops somehow?

To be clear, I don’t think it’s a good idea to translate directly from the high-growth profit-driven startup world into post-secondary services work and life. The organizations have different motives and needs, incentives and costs, and—most important—different stakeholders, with different obligations to those stakeholders. Still, there may be powerful, creative opportunities hidden in the lessons we borrow from one another.

𖧹/△ Fulcra

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Student Acquisition, Engagement, and Retention: Analogies from tech startups