The Coworker Who Sounds Like a Walking Buzzword

You know that person who talks for 10 minutes in a meeting and you can’t remember a single thing they said afterwards? 🤔

The Mystery of the Hollow Person

There's always one. In the office, in a social group. They’re earnest, they've clearly done their homework, they might even have a little notepad. They speak, and you nod along because it all sounds correct. But the moment they stop, the entire thought evaporates from the room. Nothing remains.

Meanwhile, the quiet buchō mutters a single, slightly off-topic sentence and it sticks in your head for a week. What’s the difference? According to Takanori Kataishi, CEO of yutori Inc., it's not about how long you think, but the *direction* you think in.

The Buzzword Trap

The number one trait of a “shallow” speaker is that they try way too hard to find a neat, clean conclusion. Especially the diligent ones. Their goal is to find an answer that's easy for others to understand. So they end up at these borrowed, buzzwordy conclusions. You know the ones.

“Basically, it's a `kospa` (cost performance) issue.”

“I think we lack `shinriteki anzen-sei` (psychological safety).”

Kataishi says these words are like having a hundred baseball bats but not knowing how to hit. The words are just tools. The problem is that these borrowed phrases are perfectly smooth. There are no rough edges, no personality, so they can’t catch on to anyone’s mind. They just slide right off.

The 'Why' Game

So what do you do? The trick is to dig deeper past the obvious. Kataishi uses Toyota’s famous “Five Whys” method, but for a different purpose: to find the limits of your own logic. When you see a presentation and think “sugoi,” don't stop there. Ask yourself why.

Why was it great? Because the structure was good. What about the structure was good? The part where it suddenly switched from sales data to a personal story about the presenter's friend. Why did that hit you? Because it felt... raw. Honest.

Keep asking why, and eventually you’ll hit a point where you can't answer with logic. You'll land on something like, “I don’t know why, but I just find that really important,” or “For some reason, that’s the moment that almost made me cry.” That’s it. That’s the beginning of *your* own words.

Thinking isn’t about finding more clean answers. It’s about discovering the messy, undefined edges of your own point of view.