Words Matter

Words matter. I'm a writer, so words are my thing. 

Words are metaphors and images, they convey meaning. They give us a vision and an image of what to strive and aim for.

Shared meaning is what a culture is built on, and meaning is conveyed through shared language, symbols and rituals.

The sociologist Thomas Luckmann also talked about language as the storehouse of meanings, one which eventually turns into a prison.*

We need to be careful with the words we use, do we talk about our teams as resources or as people, do we talk about our organisation as a building or as a community.

"Asgard is not a place. Never was. This could be Asgard. Asgard is where our people stand."

― Odin in Thor, Ragnarok.

"Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it - that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a write - I am a person who does things, I write, I act - and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun"

― Stephen Fry

Get skin in the game, choose your words wisely.

Pierre