There are a few groups of people that regularly use business language. This is because they must consider the business perspective as part of their work.
- An executive’s job is to consider the business perspective in all they do. Of the three work languages, business language is the one they use most often. You could go as far as to say that the expert language for executives is business language.
- Budget decision makers. Anyone who makes decisions about the budget is making decisions about how spend the company’s money. This requires a business perspective to make sure the decisions align with the company goals and are within the constraints. Discussions about budget and budget decisions use business language.
- Anyone defining strategy. This can be company strategy or team level strategy. Defining strategy involves evaluating options and making choices in the best interest of the company.
These three roles tend to be people higher up in an organisation. That would imply that business language is only needed by those people at the top.
Who should use business language?
But, instead of asking who uses business language, the more important question to answer is who should use business language?
The answer is everyone. We should all use business language. Not all the time, but more often than we think.
We all need to consider things from a business perspective in addition to our own expert or user perspectives. We need to consider the business perspective anytime we make decisions. Business perspective is important whenever we plan the scope, timeframe, and cost of our work. And business perspective is essential when we communicate with our managers and executives.
Any employee, at any level, should consider the broader implications of their ideas, decisions, and actions using business perspective. Which means anyone who talks about ideas, decisions, and actions, should talk about them using business language.
