When you feel the urge to "echo what John just said", try this instead.

You've been in that meeting. The one where no one has anything significant to add, but they feel compelled to speak anyway, so they "echo what John just said." I appreciate the appeal of echoing what John just said. Maybe John signs your checks. Or maybe you have no idea what your company does or why they hired you and you're desperate to contribute. But I promise you, there is never (literally ever) a need to "echo what John just said".

John already said it. We all heard him. Many of us even wrote down what John just said beside a pencil portrait of ourselves hanging from a noose with our bloodshot eyeballs lolled back in our skulls*. Because let's be honest: nine times out of ten, John didn't even need to say what John just said. It wasn't that great. And yet. There is always always (at least) one of you who will feel compelled to "echo" it.

I'm begging you. Resist the urge. The echo is a rookie move. It reeks of desperation.

If you absolutely must insert yourself into the conversation, there's a better way to prove to the team (or to yourself) that you're alive. Instead of merely echoing what John just said, you can do something bigger, sillier sounding, and more consuming of other people's time, like "piggy backing off of it".

Everyone who's been in business for more than a minute knows that"piggy backing off of" is the more nuanced and advanced maneuver.

To use a figure-skating analogy, let's say John serves up an impressive triple salchow of verbal garbage:

"We need to reduce our team's time-to-value ratios, while shoring up processes that yield iterative derivations."

Instead of echoing it, you are going to agree, repeat, then add a double toe loop of equivocation:

"That's exactly right. And to piggy back off of what John just said, we absolutely need to shore up those primary processes--but without diminishing the perceived value of our original solution."

Bam.

Now no one knows what the fuck is going on, or what you've all agreed to do next, including John.

And that's what we call teamwork.

And capitalism.

*That may just be a me thing.

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