Have you come across it? It’s the fastest growing participation sport in corporate life. It just needs a place in which to do it, an audience, as many players as you can muster, a few minutes’ preparation and a victim. The game is a product of boredom, cynicism and powerlessness and comprises a strange mix…
Journalists tend to be a pompous bunch when it comes to language and ‘corporate speak’. They seldom do anything that entails real responsibility, are often the most scathing when they suspect evasion and artful vaguery in others. Add the fact that journalists never have to deal with the cynicism and venality of other journalists –…
The best presenters have a flexible vocabulary that allows them to ‘fit’ the message in terms of level, language and tone to the audience in front of them. Poor speakers tend to choose jargon, cliches and terms from the word bag marked- ‘corporate tosser’. (Jerk for our US readers).
Here’s a lovely trashing of Ed Miliband’s conference speech last week. It’s by the elegantly uptight Martin Shovel and if you haven’t visited his blog yet. Please do, it’s really rather good. Here’s his view. Ed Miliband’s bargain basement speech. I thought Ed’s speech was like the worst ever bullshit bingo entrant. Someone in the…
Jan Schultink makes a valuable point very simply when he shows us how to make an endless listing of our products into a relevant, logical introduction for our customers’ benefit. In short, put the poor customer first in your thinking. Give them some background to help them understand you and your products, then ‘share’ a…
Lee Westwood, world No2 ranked golfer, made a great example of how to bring a dull stat to life yesterday and make it mean something. Speaking at a press-conference, when asked about his fitness regime, lee responded with this- “Coming to this heat I just felt I needed to lose some weight and have been…
How about this for corporate nonsense- “Combining the strategy, business processes, implementation, and technical support skills of a CRM systems integrator with the data management, analytic, and marketing skills of a database marketing service provider to deliver and operate closed-loop marketing and sales environment.” What do you think the company ‘talking’ actually does. Do they…
I know that George Orwell, English novelist, liberal and writer, only wrote 4 decent books (The Road to Wigan Pier, Down and Out in Paris & London, 1984 and Animal Farm- in my opinion). As a novelist, he was probably better at the ideas than their expression, but the was a truly great journalist. He set the standard for lean,…
Abstractions distance the audience from you as a speaker, they make it harder for you to connect your ideas with their lives. On bad days they make you sound like a charicature of corporate foolishness. The most commonly used abstractions in presentations are jargon words and phrases. Bullshit by any other name. They roll off…