Cargo Cult Communication

In 1996, Alan Sokal, a physics professor at NYU, submitted an article to a cultural studies journal. His argument was deliberately nonsensical, but the prose was dense with academic jargon and the article was published.

The hoax made a simple point: in certain spheres, complexity can be mistaken for sophistication. In corporate communication, the reverse is true: clarity signals sophistication.

Speaking in clear terms requires courage. A strategy expressed plainly becomes auditable. Investors and other stakeholders can test its logic, surface the latent assumptions, and challenge them. Plain English is an accountability mechanism. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recognized as much when it published a Plain English Handbook (1998) for disclosure documents.

If simplicity exposes the communicator, complexity protects it. Verbal scaffolding and substance-free statements (see ‘Writing Has Become Coding’) make it harder to distinguish insight from noise. They shift the burden of understanding from the communicator to the audience.

Regulators and investors are right to care. One study found that lower-earnings firms tended to produce harder-to-read annual reports than more profitable peers.

This pattern appears in small details. I regularly find that company descriptions under ‘About us’ tabs often fail the basic test: after reading them, it is still unclear what the firm does to earn money.

To implement a more systematic analysis, I reviewed earnings call transcripts from large-cap industrial companies with the support of ChatGPT. Readability tools such as Flesch-Kincaid and the Gunning Fog Index confirmed measurable differences in language complexity across peers.

Fundamentally, readability is not just a communications issue. It is a diagnostic of strategic maturity. Unclear language may reflect unresolved management logic: too many strategic priorities, an incoherent asset portfolio, unspoken trade-offs, weak causal chains, confused time horizons, or conflicting financial targets.

In a 1974 address at Caltech entitled 'Cargo Cult Science,' Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate in physics, described Pacific islanders who built mock runways and wooden control towers after the war. They carefully imitated the form of airfields in the hope that the planes, and their cargo, would return.  Feynman applied the metaphor to scientific work that imitates the rituals of science while lacking integrity: ‘The form is perfect. […] But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land.’

Cargo cult communication is the corporate equivalent: the appearance of sophistication without the runway of clarity investors need to land an investment decision.

But investors are not easily fooled. They know that sophistication can be faked and that clarity cannot.

PS: Readability analysis of this note (source: ChatGPT)