Some of the most interesting conversations I have about language happen at home. My teenage daughters use phrases that carry meaning in their world but often require translation in mine. Words like “flex,” “sus,” and “low key” are not just slang. They are compressed emotional signals. “Flex” is not just showing off, it is signaling status. “Sus” is not just suspicious, it is a quick judgment about trust. “Low key” often means something is both true and intentionally understated at the same time.
After a while I realized something important. Every language system develops shorthand. And every shorthand eventually risks becoming habit instead of meaning.
That is not unique to teenagers. It is what happens in every profession, including emergency management.
1. Jargon That Sounds Meaningful(but May Not Be)
Some phrases function more as professional shorthand than operational clarity. They sound like strategy but often mask ambiguity or replace it entirely.
Force multiplier
We often use this phrase to describe anything that appears to improve capability. Technology platforms are frequently labeled force multipliers, especially when they are introduced with the promise of efficiency, integration, or streamlined workflows.
In practice, that effect is not guaranteed.
Many emergency management professionals have experienced systems that were intended to enhance performance but instead added layers of friction. A common example is enterprise platforms that are deployed as universal solutions, even when they are not designed for every function they are asked to perform.
For instance, in some environments, tools like SharePoint are used not only for document management but also for calendars, workflow tracking, project dashboards, and communication hubs. The intent is consolidation. The result is often the opposite. Instead of multiplying capability, the system multiples steps, workarounds, and maintenance that slow down the very processes it was meant to accelerate.
In those cases, the tool does not multiply effectiveness. It redistributes workload into administrative overhead.
The phrase is not wrong. But it is often used to assume benefit rather than demonstrate it.
Low hanging fruit
This phrase is usually used to justify starting with what is easiest to accomplish. On its surface, that seems practical. But in complex environments, ease of execution is not always aligned with importance.
After several disaster recovery efforts, jurisdictions have prioritized visible actions such as updating messaging templates or distributing preparedness materials because they were straightforward to implement. Meanwhile, more complex structural issues such as resource tracking systems, interoperability gaps, or long term recovery governance structures remained unresolved.
The low hanging fruit gets picked early. The higher impact work often requires sustained effort and coordination.
Circle back
This is one of the most common phrases in meetings, and one of the least likely to result in actual follow through. It often functions as a polite exit from unresolved issues rather than a commitment to resolution.
In coordination calls during response operations, complex issues such as resource allocation disputes or interagency communication breakdowns are frequently deferred with a promise to circle back. In practice, those issues often remain unresolved unless they resurface as operational problems.
The phrase implies continuity of attention. In practice, issues are often dropped unless someone is actively responsible for driving them forward.
This is our new normal
This phrase is often used after major disruptions to describe sustained change in operations or expectations. It signals adaptation, but it can also signal premature normalization.
Following the COVID 19 pandemic, many organizations described remote coordination, altered staffing structures, and extended virtual operations as the new normal. In some cases, this reflected lasting change. In others, it avoided deeper evaluation of whether those conditions were effective or simply persistent.
Labeling something as normal does not confirm its suitability. It simply describes its duration.
Build the plane while flying it
This phrase is frequently used to describe emergency response conditions where action must occur without full preparation. It reflects the reality of improvisation under pressure. It is also often said with a sense of bravado, like this is a good thing
However, it is also sometimes used to describe preventable gaps in planning.
During large scale evacuations and rapid onset disasters, agencies have had to simultaneously establish traffic control, shelter capacity, communication systems, and resource staging in real time. While adaptability is essential, post incident analysis often shows that portions of these systems could have been developed and tested in advance.
Improvisation is inevitable in disasters. But it should not become the default substitute for preparation.
2. Useful Metaphors That Can Mislead
Metaphors are powerful because they simplify complexity. But that simplification can also distort how we think about execution.
Control the narrative
This phrase suggests a level of influence that rarely exists in modern information environments.
During major disasters, emergency managers are only one voice in a much larger information system. Survivors share updates from the field. Media organizations interpret events in real time. Officials provide briefings. Social media amplifies all of it simultaneously.
After several large wildfire and hurricane events, agencies have acknowledged that even with timely and accurate messaging, misinformation and rumor often spread faster than official corrections.
The goal is not control. The goal is credibility. The trusted source does not dominate the narrative. It earns attention within it.
Every disaster is different
This phrase is universally true and operationally incomplete.
After Hurricane Sandy, coastal surge impacts required a very different recovery approach than inland flooding in nearby regions. After the Joplin tornado, debris management and housing recovery became dominant operational challenges in ways that differed significantly from other tornado events.
The phrase only becomes useful when it leads to a second question. How is this disaster different, and what does that require us to do differently.
Flexibility is the key
Flexibility is essential in emergency management, but it is often treated as an unexamined virtue.
In prolonged activations, flexibility can become a substitute for addressing structural issues such as staffing models or resource constraints. Organizations adapt to strain rather than resolving its cause.
True flexibility should be structured. It should allow adaptation within defined boundaries and clear operational thresholds.
Without that structure, flexibility becomes endurance rather than effectiveness.
Train like you fight
This phrase is widely accepted but unevenly applied.
Exercises often test decision making well but do not fully replicate operational complexity. Real world response includes simultaneous pressures such as staffing shortages, infrastructure damage, media scrutiny, and interagency coordination under stress.
After major incidents, reviews frequently identify gaps that were not fully exposed in training environments.
The intent of the phrase is correct. The execution is inconsistent.
3. Timeless Truths Worth Saving
Some phrases endure because they capture something essential. The challenge is not to discard them, but to preserve their meaning in practice rather than repetition.
Disasters are not the time to exchange business cards
This is one of the most repeated phrases in emergency management and one of the least operationally supported.
If relationships matter during disasters, then they must be built long before them. Yet many organizations do not maintain structured systems and trackers to actually ensure that planners, logisticians, communicators, and operational leaders have established working relationships across agencies and jurisdictions.
We say relationships matter in crisis, but we rarely track how those relationships are built, maintained, or tested under pressure.
Whole Community
This concept, strongly associated with former FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, remains one of the most important frameworks in emergency management.
But it has also become one of the most variably interpreted.
Ask ten professionals to define their whole community and you may get ten different answers. Even more importantly, ask how often that community is actually engaged in planning and exercises and the gap between concept and execution becomes clear.
A Whole Community approach is not a slogan. It is a mapping exercise, a relationship structure, and an accountability system. Without that, it becomes a phrase we repeat rather than a model we implement.
Lessons learned
Perhaps no phrase is more common in after action reports and no phrase is more misleading in its comfort.
In practice, many organizations do not fully learn lessons. They observe them, document them, and archive them. They are not Lessons learned. They are Lessons observed.
During my time in FEMA Region III, Regional Administrator MaryAnn Tierney implemented a discipline of not only capturing lessons but tracking corrective actions, assigning responsibility, and exercising again to validate whether changes actually worked. Only when behavior changed could a lesson truly be considered learned.
Without that loop, lessons learned often becomes lessons observed.
Build back better
Few phrases generate as much agreement and as much ambiguity.
Better according to whom and defined by what measure?
Better can mean stronger infrastructure, improved equity, greater economic stability, environmental resilience, or faster recovery timelines. Those outcomes do not always align.
In places like Joplin, Missouri after the 2011 tornado, recovery success has been measured in multiple ways over time, from physical rebuilding to long term economic and community recovery. In other communities, recovery has been uneven, unclear or prolonged depending on governance, resources, and long term investment.
Without defining better in advance, we risk declaring success without knowing what success actually means.
Closing Thought
Words matter. They shape expectations, guide decisions, and carry the weight of shared professional experience.
But words alone do not create outcomes. A phrase repeated without reflection becomes a slogan. A slogan repeated without action becomes background noise.
Emergency management does not need fewer memorable expressions. It needs professionals willing to ask what those expressions truly require and the discipline to ensure that action still matches meaning.
I’m not trying to flex, but some of our loose repetitions of figurative language are, low key, sus.
Dan Stoneking is the Owner and Principal of Stoneking Strategic Communications, the Author of Crisis Communications and Emergency Management, the Founder and Vice President of the Emergency Management External Affairs Association, the Founder of Message Prism, and an Adjunct Professor in the Communications Department at West Chester University.
