Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter's Guide [Hardcover]

Brian Fugere (Author), Chelsea Hardaway (Author), Jon Warshawsky (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 22, 2005

Ole!

If you think you smell something at work, there's probably good reason--"bull" has become the official language of business. Every day, we get bombarded by an endless stream of filtered, antiseptic, jargon-filled corporate speak, all of which makes it harder to get heard, harder to be authentic, and definitely harder to have fun.

But it doesn't have to be that way. The team that brought you the Clio Award-winning Bullfighter software is back with an entertaining, bare-knuckled guide to talking straight--for those who want to climb the corporate ladder, but refuse to check their personality at the door.

Why Business People Speak Like Idiots exposes four traps that transform us from funny, honest and engaging weekend people into boring business stiffs:

• The Obscurity Trap: "After extensive analysis of the economic factors facing our industry, we have concluded that a restructuring is essential to maintaining competitive position. A task force has been assembled..." These are the empty calories of business communication. And, unfortunately, they're the rule. The Obscurity Trap catches idiots desperate to sound smart or prove their purpose, and lures them with message-killers like jargon, long-windedness, acronyms, and evasiveness.

• The Anonymity Trap: Businesses love clones--easy to hire, easy to manage, easy to train, easy to replace--and almost everyone is all too happy to oblige. We outsource our voice through templates, speechwriters and email, and cave in to conventions that aren't really even rules.

• The Hard-Sell Trap: Legions of business people fall prey to the Hard-Sell Trap. We overpromise. We accentuate the positive and pretend the negative doesn't exist. This may work for those pushing Ginsu knives and miracle Abdominizers, but it's dead wrong for persuading business people to listen.

• The Tedium Trap: Everyone you work with thinks about sex, tells stories, gets caught up in life's amazing details, and judges everyone else by the way they look and act. We live to be entertained. We all learned that in Psychology 101, except for the business idiots who must have skipped that semester. They tattoo their long executive-sounding titles on their foreheads, dump pre-packaged numbers on their audience, and virtually guarantee that we want nothing to do with them.

This is your wake-up call. Personality, humanity and candor are being sucked out of the workplace. Let the wonks send their empty messages. Yours are going to connect.

Fast Company magazine named Why Business People Speak Like Idiots one of the ideas and trends that will change how we work and live in 2005.

So grab your cape and sharpen your sword. It's time to fight the bull!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dull, verbose, evasive language that disguises empty-headed clichés with jargon-drenched hype is pilloried in this diverting indictment of everyday business-speak. The authors are consultants, and their familiarity with the subject, enhanced through their side job peddling "Bullfighter" anti-jargon software, gives their irreverent critique a funny, knowing edge. Besides ridiculing some ripe samples of corporate pseudo-communication, they offer advice on the art of "persuasion" in every genre, from the humble e-mail to the shareholders' address, and throw in tips on public speaking, dress and deportment. Much of their advice-keep things concrete and specific, talk about what your audience is interested in-is fine, but some suggestions, like spicing up corporate presentations with ethnic humor, sexual innuendo and mild profanity, are certain to backfire. The authors also open themselves to their own critique. They throw around buzzwords like "authenticity," vapid clichés like "being you is all you'll ever need" and meaningless hype like "one-quarter of the gross domestic product is linked to persuasion." One of their recommendations for making presentations "spontaneous" and "personal" is to download anecdotes from an anecdote Web site. An injunction to brevity is translated into a mindless bean-counting formula proscribing sentences longer than 21 words (a figure derived from the "Flesch Reading Ease Scale"). And while they complain that "technology...makes it too convenient to automate the one part of business that should never be outsourced: our voice," their signature remedy for turgid, jargon-riddled prose is to run it through their anti-jargon computer program. The authors deliver a scintillating diagnosis of the problems in business communications, but sometimes their cure for the disease is the disease. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

"Let's face it. Business today is drowning in bullshit," say the authors of this timely, highly entertaining guide to cutting through corporatespeak and communicating effectively. Fugere and his coauthors, Chelsea Hardaway and Jon Warshawsky, are all veterans of the consulting giant Deloitte, and they speak with a jaded insider's view of "hype-filled, self-aggrandizing product literature" and "elephantine" reports that "shed less than two watts of light on the big issues." The concise chapters focus on common communication traps of business executives, including the tendency to write obscure, colorless, template information rather than clear material that speaks directly to its audience. Throughout, excerpts of egregious corporatespeak offer amusing, cautionary examples, and an appended glossary includes more offending phrases, along with deliciously sardonic definitions. Best of all, the authors suggest plenty of practical ways to break the bad habits. In an era in which phrases such as "going-forward value proposition" are supposed to mean something, this is a crucial guide, filled with "value-added deliverables" for readers in all professions who yearn for basic, substantive communication. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1 edition (February 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743269098
• ISBN-13: 978-0743269094
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #560,840 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book! Its about time someone cut thru the esoteria May 18, 2005

By R. Shaff VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

How many times have you read a phrase in a book, financial report, consultant's report, or technical journal that, when you finished, you asked, "What did that just say?" If this esoteric jargon drives you nuts, and makes you wonder why the author uses these terms/phrases, then WHY BUSINESS PEOPLE SPEAK LIKE IDIOTS: A BULLFIGHTERS GUIDE is a book to read. IDIOTS calls to task the disingenuous garbage many corporate types call "reporting." Many just wanting to get by will drink the koolaid and allow these items to pass without exception.

Fugere, Hardaway, Warshawsky are three consultants, "addicts" if you will, who have decided to get off the jargon-riddled bandwagon. They detail how generic corporate atmospheres have mutated business from one of communication and meaning to one of faux intellectual elitism. Those deriding this seemingly overwhelming problem have found that speaking to the masses is much easier when one tries NOT to speak Greek.

The three authors, in an effort to spread the word virally, have created a software program called, appropriately, Bullfighter. The purpose of the program is to scour MS Word and PowerPoint documents to rid them of "jargon-mania."

Every profession creates its own jargon so insiders can discuss their livelihoods in a form of esoteric shorthand. However, jargon becomes a problem when it is used to lord over others or make them feel inferior, Warshawsky said.

The authors have studied the reception to their concept by setting up shop in an ever-busy Starbucks to take a simple survey. They showed patrons one of two actual company writing samples: one was jargon-less, while the other was the typical junk-filled jargon-based smoke and mirrors. The authors asked the patrons to assign adjectives to each communiqué. The jargon-laden sample consistently earned words like "rude and obnoxious" while the clearly written one was called "energetic" and "friendly." 'Nuff said.

In sum, this book cuts directly to the chase of the confusing, mind-numbing rhetoric, and offers an alternative. As one who reads legal and financial documents for a living, this book fits the bill, and none too soon. If you read these types of documents in your work or are just tired of the insanity of double-speak, pick this book up and read it.

Highly recommended.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This should be required reading for a college degree. October 25, 2005

By J. West

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Which of the following proposals do you prefer?

BUSINESS-DOUBLESPEAK:
"The historical trends have led me to conclude that by doubling or even tripling our efforts of efficiency on the domestic front, it will yield a new entity of massive synergistic proportions. I therefore wish to present to you this exhibit (a composite of metallic and mineral elements) acquired from licensed retail channels as a symbol of our new alliance. Your acceptance of this strategy would launch a series of initiatives culminating in an event that would be in compliance with local and national authorities and internationally recognized by virtually all foreign governments. Your prompt feedback in this matter is in the best interests of all stakeholders."

PLAINTALK:
"Will you marry me?"

If you think the above example is absurd, think again because it's exactly how lots of business people write their emails, PowerPoints, and reports. It's also how graduate students write their research papers. It's also how lawyers write their legal briefs.

Ironically, I think the very people this book could help are the same people that don't recognize they have a problem.

For those people that already write in a plain concise style, this book is a very entertaining review of business writing nonsense. Sadly, genuine people thinking hard about real solutions to problems are outnumbered by pretenders just blowing smoke.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Enough material for a good article April 18, 2007

By R. Mclean

Format:Hardcover

I wanted to like this book, but:

It's a very simplistic idea - Speak like a human not a jargon-addled automaton and people will like you and understand you better. Basically, if you read the first chapter, you've read the book.

I had hoped that there would be some actual research or references to research that supports a lot of the opinions the authors put forward. I was disappointed. Their own research sounds really thin and designed to prove a foregone conclusion rather than really shed light on the subject. And there was little in terms of linking to meaningful, objective research.

The examples they gave of what they consider good communication versus idiotic business-speak weren't very clear, fair or convincing.

I also felt like the tone of the writing and the read were pretty vindictive and self-righteous rather than helpful. I actually started to feel sorry for the "idiots" they are ripping on.

Conclusion: "truthy" ramblings galore, but no real news here.