Office-speak often contains nuances and parentheticals that can bury not just the lead but the entire point. 办公语言在措辞上常有的细微之处和附加说明，不仅会模糊要点，还会让人不知所云。

Comedies like Office Space ring true for a reason. 例如，像《上班一条虫》之类的喜剧看上去那么真实就是有原因的。

People fear insulting others, especially the boss, so they hedge. 人们害怕得罪别人，尤其是老板，所以会避重就轻。

Rather than stating, "I disagree with our expansion strategy," they say, 他们不会说“我不同意这项扩张战略”，而会说：

"While I think there are many good reasons why we are opening this new line of business and I feel confident that the management team has done a thorough ROI analysis, “我认为开展这种新业务有许多很好的理由，也相信管理团队已经进行了周密的投资回报分析。

I am not sure we have completely thought through all of the downstream effects of taking this step forward at this time." Huh? 不过，我不太确定我们是否考虑到目前采取这种策略会产生什么影响？”

With all of these caveats, it's hard to decipher what the speaker actually thinks. 附加了这么多说明，就很难搞清楚说话的人心里到底是怎么想的。

When communicating hard truths, less is often more. 当传达令人难以接受的事实时，通常要遵循“少即是多”的原则。

A few years ago, Mark Zuckerberg decided to learn Chinese. 几年前，马克·扎克伯格决定学习中文。

To practice, he spent time with a group of Facebook employees who were native speakers. 为了练习口语，他会花时间与公司里以中文为母语的员工交流。

One might think that Mark's limited language skills would have kept these conversations from being substantively useful. 有人认为扎克伯格有限的语言能力会让这类对话起不到什么实际作用，

Instead, they gave him greater insight into what was going on in the company. 然而正相反，这些员工让扎克伯格更深刻地了解到公司的情况。

For example, one of the women was trying to tell Mark something about her manager. 比如，有个女员工想跟扎克伯格谈谈自己的经理。

Mark didn't understand so he said, "Simpler, please." 扎克伯格听不明白，便说“请说得简单点”。

Then she spoke again, but he still didn't understand, so he had to ask her to simplify further. This happened a few more times. 她又说了一遍，扎克伯格还是没听懂，不得不让她说得再简单点。反复几次后。