Figure 1 – The Architecture of Appearances and the Foundations of Experience – Professional language can create the appearance of expertise long before competence has been demonstrated. While titles, frameworks and sophisticated narratives increasingly shape professional identities, genuine expertise continues to emerge from practice, difficult decisions, accountability and measurable results. The challenge is not choosing between thinking and doing, but recognising when the former has become disconnected from the latter.

“We have become remarkably good at describing what should be done. Perhaps it is time to rediscover the value of those who have actually done it.”

Every professional community develops its own language. English titles, acronyms and fashionable expressions help us identify roles, skills and areas of expertise. They allow people from different countries and industries to communicate quickly.

But professional language also performs another function: it signals belonging.

Knowing when to say traction, runway, burn rate, product-market fit, scalability or go-to-market strategy makes someone sound like part of the startup world. Terms such as EBITDA, cash flow, valuation, multiples and return on investment create a similar effect in finance. In technology and consulting, the same happens with transformation, governance, roadmap, resilience and thought leadership.

These expressions can be useful and precise. The problem begins when fluency in the language is mistaken for experience in the work.

A founder may speak confidently about scale before having found paying customers. A startup may celebrate its valuation while avoiding questions about revenue, margins or cash. A consultant may present a sophisticated transformation roadmap without ever having carried responsibility for implementing one. Someone may understand the vocabulary of investment without having managed capital, faced losses or made decisions under genuine financial pressure.

The words make a professional identity immediately recognisable. They do not prove what lies behind it.

Startup language is particularly effective at turning assumptions into apparent achievements. An idea becomes a venture. Initial interest becomes traction. A small experiment becomes a pilot. Ordinary growth becomes scaling. Spending becomes burn. A lack of profitability becomes a deliberate investment in expansion.

Sometimes those descriptions are entirely justified. Sometimes they simply postpone a more direct question: is there a sustainable business?

Financial language can create an even stronger impression of objectivity. Numbers, ratios and technical terms appear neutral and authoritative. Yet a calculation is only as reliable as its assumptions.

A valuation is not money in the bank.

Revenue is not profit.

Profit is not cash. A forecast is not a result.

This is not an argument against English terminology or specialist vocabulary. International work requires a shared language, and many concepts lose precision when translated. The danger lies in allowing terminology to replace evidence.

“Over the years, I have met professionals who could explain an entire transformation without ever having transformed anything, and others who had transformed entire organisations without knowing the fashionable terminology used to describe their achievements. The difference was rarely intelligence. It was experience, responsibility and the willingness to confront reality.”

Real expertise develops more slowly than vocabulary. It comes from repetition, difficult decisions, changing conditions, mistakes and accountability for results. It includes knowing when a recognised model does not apply. It also produces humility: the more situations we experience, the less likely we are to believe that the latest expression explains everything.

Professional language changes quickly. Competence does not.

This is especially relevant today, when a new role can appear almost overnight and become a LinkedIn identity by the following morning. Artificial intelligence has accelerated the process. People can learn the terminology of a new field long before they have worked through its practical, organisational and ethical consequences.

A title may open a conversation, but it should never conclude it. We still need to ask:

• What have you actually built, managed or changed?
• For how long?
• Who paid for it?
• What results can be examined?
• What decisions were you responsible for?
• What failed, and what did you learn?
• Would you use the same language if you had to risk your own time, reputation or capital?

Language should help make experience visible. It should not protect us from discovering whether that experience exists.

In a professional culture increasingly shaped by personal branding, perhaps one of the most important skills is learning to distinguish between people who know the terminology and people who have lived the work.

The two are not always the same.

Many people can speak convincingly about innovation, transformation and the future. Many can repeat an announcement, explain a new technology, adopt the latest terminology or describe what others have achieved. Far fewer can explain what they have actually built, changed or made possible themselves.

Repeating an announcement is easy. Turning it into a polished presentation or a LinkedIn post is even easier, particularly with AI.

But does repeating information create knowledge? Does describing someone else’s achievements demonstrate competence? And, ultimately, what value are we adding?

After decades working across technology, business and organisations, I have become increasingly convinced that the real distinction is not between those who can speak and those who cannot. It is between those who merely reproduce narratives and those who can enrich them with experience, independent judgement and an understanding of consequences.

The world does not lack people who can explain what is happening. It needs more people who understand why it matters, what can actually be done, and who are prepared to take responsibility for doing it.

Because knowing the words is not the same as knowing the work.

Some word about the image I created …

The image represents the growing distance between professional appearance and genuine competence — between knowing how to describe work and knowing how to do it.

It visualises the central argument of your article, More Words Than Experience.

Two worlds, two approaches to professional life

On the left – The Architecture of Appearances

A sophisticated, almost weightless corporate environment, populated by executives, dashboards, financial charts and presentations.

Everything appears polished, organised and successful. Yet the entire structure seems to float above reality, disconnected from solid foundations.

It symbolises a professional culture increasingly built around terminology, titles, personal branding, business narratives and the appearance of expertise.

On the right – The Architecture of Experience

A less glamorous environment, where engineers, designers and professionals are actually working.

They are building, experimenting, calculating, making decisions and confronting practical constraints.

Their world is imperfect, complex and demanding, but it rests on something tangible: experience, responsibility and results.

The deeper meaning: the gap between the two worlds

The abyss separating the platforms is the most important element.

It represents the distance between what professionals claim to know and what they have actually demonstrated they can do.

Interestingly, neither side is necessarily wrong.

The left represents abstraction, strategy, communication and financial modelling — all essential activities.

The right represents implementation, experimentation, operational knowledge and accountability.

The problem arises when the first claims the authority of the second without having earned it.