In This Edition Of The Soulful Lens at Work: ​
​
Most people are either too vague or too detailed. Being concise and specific means that you can be brief while still being tangible.

• SOULFUL: Stop crushing listener’s souls with meandering and gauzy words. Decoding what your message is exhausting people.
• PRACTICAL: Reclaim time wasted in sloppy communication, and channel them into real business impact.
• THE CONNECTION: Ditch six empty buzzwords and watch your message land with maximum force.
• TRY THIS: Seven tactics to stop diluting your message and cut through the noise.

Hi Reader,
​
A client once told me my words slice through complexity like “a hot knife through butter.” With just a few sharp sentences, I can cut straight to the crux of any issue.

Yet I notice time and again: someone is asked to distill their slides, email, article— and they dilute it instead. There’s no hot knife, it’s like they just put the whole slab of butter in the microwave.

Rather than landing on that punchy example, they water it down into corporate‑speak gobbledygook—“various problems,” “several issues”—they leave out the best part!

Are you yada-yada-ing over the best parts of your message?
Or are you over‑explaining buries your point in a sea of trivia, forcing readers to connect all the dots themselves?

This week, we’re mastering how to be both concise and specific—how to hit hard without watering down your message.

Invest just a few minutes in these techniques, and you’ll shift your impact. This skill is a differentiator that very few people master. Become one of the few!

Let’s get clear, get concise, and get results.

Soulfully ✨
​- Jardena

Concise is Kind

When your message meanders, it wears on people’s souls—forcing them to jump mental hoops, decipher jargon, and burn precious brainpower. Soulful communication means syncing with the audience: no distractions, no hidden caveats, just a clear channel between you and them.

Have you been in a meeting where people are going around in circles? It’s torture right? I had a colleague who would say “this meeting is in violation of the Geneva Convention.” YOU can cut through that pain with a few well placed words.

Note: An idea doesn’t have to be fully formed to be concise. You can share a half-baked idea in a clear, concise way. “Here’s what I’m solving for. Here’s what I am not yet clear on.” That honest pinpointing of the crux is the very heart of being concise and specific.

Let every word you choose be an act of connection, not distraction.

Being Concise and Specific Wins in Business — and Your Career

When you communicate in a way that is Concise and Specific, decisions get made quickly and people can rally. This makes real movement in business.

I’m going to be blunt about your career here for a moment. It’s not about sounding smart. It’s about professional maturity. I haven’t used that term in this newsletter before. But I’ll give it to you straight - meandering language erodes credibility, even from the smartest person. That hot knife through butter, that shows discernment and maturity.

Here are a few ways being Concise and Specific wins in Business:

• Accelerated Decisions: Clear, specific asks eliminate back‑and‑forth. Stakeholders know exactly what you need and why—tightening timelines and cutting meeting overload.
• Message can Cascade: Teams rally around one unmistakable message. Nobody’s guessing meaning or playing telephone. People can pass the message along without it getting lost in translation.
• A Seat at the Table: Precision signals professional maturity. When you provide clarity, you’ll start getting seats at bigger and bigger tables.
• Less Wasted time in Meetings: Every minute saved in communication can be put towards something more useful.

Being Concise and Specific isn’t just style—it’s a strategic advantage. Speak with precision, and watch your business performance sharpen in real time.

Getting Specific

When your language is both concise and specific, people spend their energy on the idea—not on decoding jargon. Vague phrasing frustrates the soul and chews up company time (and money).

Fallacy: “I’m trying to summarize 10 things into one, so I have to be generic”.

Even harmless buzzwords—holistic, enable, integration—invite more questions than answers. They cry out for real detail:

• Holistic - across what? what is the main gap?
• Enable - what is not enabled now?
• Integration - what and what? Where is lack of integration causing a problem?
• Synching - what is most out of sync?
• Best (or Good) Practices - Out of dozens, which one drives our goal?
• Optimize - what is most sub-optimal now?

Here are some examples for you to consider, where attempt to summarize has sucked the life out of the message. I’ve included a proposed alternative for each.

Gobbledygook: “Next quarter we’ll add a bunch of new features, including integrations, analytics, and workflow improvements.”
​Concise and Specific: “In Q3 we’ll ship Salesforce integration first—so your reps can log calls without leaving our app.”

Gobbledygook: “We’re deploying to multiple international regions and our cross‑regional teams are syncing up on various issues.”
​Concise and Specific: “We deployed to six regions last week. During our Germany launch (our second‑largest market at 20% of revenue), the team fixed the VAT‑reporting bug affecting 10% of invoices in record time.”

What’s one place in your next message where you can cut the fuzz, add a concrete data point or example, and lighten people’s cognitive load?

How to Be a Concise & Specific Communicator​
Every word you choose should pull its weight. Use these next steps to sharpen your message:

1. Identify Your Audience​
   Even if it’s just one person, ask: What one key takeaway do I want them to remember?
2. Set the Context​
   Define the problem up front. Why does this matter now, and how does it fit with other priorities?
3. Lead with the Conclusion​
   Start with your bottom line. This isn’t a mystery novel—give the answer first, then explain how you got there.
4. Purge the Vague Words​
   Scan for buzzwords (e.g., “optimize,” “enable,” “holistic”). Replace each with a concrete detail: numbers, names, dates, or outcomes.
5. Anchor with an Example​
   Pick one vivid case to illustrate your point—the single story that brings your message to life.
6. Highlight One Statistic​
   Zero in on one compelling metric that quantifies your impact or the scope of the issue.
7. Cut the Asides​
   Stick to one message per communication. If there are related topics, save them for a follow‑up.

Follow these steps, and you’ll free your audience from decoding mode, so they can focus on action, not analysis.

To help you practice simplifying your message, I've created a worksheet with exercises and an AI prompt to guide you through these steps, making it easier to craft concise and impactful communication.

Ever been in a meeting where the jargon is so vague, it leaves you more confused than informed? In this video, I break down a classic example of ‘fluff’ and show you how being concise and specific can cut through the noise and drive real results. Watch this 3 minute video to see how you can transform your communication for greater impact.