A couple of decades’ in a fortune-500 global company create an experience of what happens as a company grows; and how to work with people speaking different languages. It injects subtle insight to predict the growth potential of companies of much smaller size. 
There are many factors to decide if a company makes it to a giant such as the industry, the products, the innovation and the people. Zooming in the people factor, a lot could be told from observing the culture, the leadership style, the performance review system. I find it reflecting when observing the language. Just like country has its language, company has its language as well.
- Name-based language or what I would call “Peter, Paul and Mary”.
- How does name-based sound like? “I have Peter working with Mary on this stuff, with Paul”. A quick clarification – It is not name-dropping of mentioning important people in conversations. Peter, Paul and Mary could be anyone and at times even the folks working for the vendors or customers.
- What is the implication? Individual first, tasks/objectives to follow. (This is something that people in very large company miss, after a while, individual does not matter. It could show only those individuals know the stuff, especially if the stuff is not very clear. It is more about “who is involved” more so than “what gets done”.
- Imagine there are multiple Peter, many Paul and hundreds of Mary as the company grows, it becomes as cryptic as listening to a language that one has never heard of. As company grows, the “who” may need to be refined if not replaced by “who plus a clear what”.
- Acronyms-based language.
- Most companies have this. Neither Google nor Yahoo can help. Those acronyms are often unique to the company and have totally different meaning from what Google reveals.
- Well, acronyms are like new vocabularies. If the context of communication is clear, then acronyms sound more like learning new word or a new accent of a language that one speaks. This seems an easier portion to pick up than “Peter, Paul and Mary” and continues to exist no matter the size of the company.
- Scientific or ambiguous language.
- Is the language consistent in saying the same thing with the same words? Or is there a lot of thesaurus that creates a total different ways of saying? Too much variety could be an obstacle in massive and global communication.
- Communication Style, whatever the language, how is it used?
- Do people communicate (directly)? What is the distance that a message has to travel before reaching the target audience? The more direct, the shorter the distance.
- Do they even communicate and do it consistently? Do the leaders take initiative to talk not just the earning results, but also the objectives and directions?
Each company has its own language. If one listens to the company language carefully, it helps to predict how far the language could go, how clear the communication is, and how much the people need to adjust the language if the company grows.
Is it worth to research on the correlation between company language and its growth trajectory?
oliviatamccue 
