Review: Why Business People Speak Like Idiots
“This is just the kind of synergistic, customer-centric, upsell-driven, out-of-the-box, customizable, strategically tactical, best-of-breed thought leadership that will help our clients track to true north. Let’s fly this up the flagpole and see where the pushback is.”
– Fight the Bull
Does the paragraph above sound familiar? Could it be part of the daily dialogue that your company speaks in? Or (gasp!) how you converse? If so then today’s book can be a “How To” guide on escaping the bull. Why Business People Speak Like Idiots by Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, and Jon Warshawsky, as evident in the title, explains why the business world is filled with hyped-up, overused, obscure jargon. It’s the same jargon that leaves its readers uninspired, bored, and aware that whatever is being said is bull.
The authors wrote this book, along with their software tool Bullfighter*, to fight the bull. They present us with the 4 bull traps and many suggestions on how to spare our audiences from its usage. Why Business People Speak like Idiots is filled with witty examples of the bull that we face daily, and the steps we can take to prevent us from adding to the bull! I thought it was an excellent read, and had me laughing at the all too familiar anecdotes. Go read it!
* The Bullfighter software, according to the site is, “the epoch-defining software that works with Microsoft Word and PowerPoint to help you find and eliminate jargon in your documents”. I suggest you try this software out with the latest announcement from your company. You’d be surprised (or maybe not!) at the amount of bull your company and co-workers are spewing out.
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