Imagine hiring a brilliant cook.
You give her fresh ingredients, sharp knives and a shiny new stove.
Then put her in a kitchen designed by someone who has never made dinner.
The fridge is magnificent.
Big, shiny and stocked with everything she needs.
There’s just one problem.
It’s at the far end of the kitchen, behind a door.
The starter needs mushrooms.
Across the kitchen.
Through the door.
Back again.
The main course needs cream.
Same trip.
Dessert needs berries.
Off she goes.
She can still make a great meal.
But she spends more time walking than cooking.
So what do you do?
Tell her to move faster?
Buy her a sharper knife?
Hire a second cook?
None of that moves the fridge.
Businesses make the same mistake every day.
They hire smart people.
Give them powerful tools.
Then expect them to work around decisions nobody has made.
Marketing needs a campaign.
Sales needs a pitch.
Product needs a roadmap.
But the big questions are still up for debate.
Whom are we trying to win?
Why should they choose us?
What are we willing to give up?
Deadlines don't wait for decisions.
So people fill in the blanks.
Marketing promises a product that works straight out of the box.
Sales promises it'll be built just for you.
Product is trying to build one version that works for everyone.
Three teams doing their jobs.
Three perfectly reasonable assumptions.
Three different ideas of what the business is trying to be.
And when someone asks which promise is the real one?
Back to leadership.
Another question.
Another meeting.
Another trip across the kitchen.
Except leadership hasn't agreed on the answer either.
Meanwhile, the guesses spread.
A guess repeated often enough starts to look like a decision.
“That’s Language Debt. Unclear thinking turning into messages, promises and plans that other people build on.”
Like technical debt, it grows quietly.
Until someone has to pay for it.
The director finally sees the campaign.
“That’s not quite what we meant.”
The agency rewrites the website.
Sales changes the deck.
Product wants to know which promise it's supposed to deliver.
And the buyer?
She reads one promise, hears another and gets a third.
Another meeting.
Another rewrite.
Another week.
The expensive part isn't always bad work.
It's good work built on decisions nobody made.
And every new version makes the missing decision more expensive to fix.
Then someone suggests a familiar solution.
Maybe.
But what exactly is the punch meant to land on?
An agency can sharpen the headline.
AI can produce twenty more versions before lunch.
A sales coach can improve the pitch.
But none of them can decide which promise the business is prepared to keep.
That's not a writing problem.
It's a business problem showing up in the writing, the selling and the delivery.
So before you ask your people to move faster, ask why they keep making the same trips.
Make the hard choices.
Decide who you serve, why they should choose you and what you won't do.
Then put those choices where people can see them, challenge them and use them.
Not in the founder's head.
Not buried on slide 64 of a strategy deck.
On one page that helps people make the next call without another meeting.
So marketing knows what to promise.
Sales knows what to sell.
Product knows what to build.
And the buyer gets one consistent story, from the first click to the first use.
Sometimes the best way to make a business move faster isn't to make people run.
It's to move the damn fridge.
PS. If you don’t know jewellery, know your jeweller. That’s Buffett’s rule. It’s the same with messaging. Smart ideas die in boring words. If you don’t know the game, find a partner who does, because your reputation is on the line. I help thinkers, rebels, and disruptors say what they mean and make it stick. Step up. Bring your message. I’ll bring the punch. You’ve got one shot to say it right. I’ll help you take it.