Top 5 Books for Communicators (and Business People) - #4

The #4 book on my list of Top 5 Books for Communicators (and Business People) is one of two books that isn't, directly, about social media (although, you could argue that social media is certainly more than simply a channel, but rather, is a philosophy about how to communicate, in which case, this book certainly qualifies):

Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, by Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway and Jon Warshawsky
In 2003, Deloitte Consulting released a program, known as "Bullfighter," which intended to point out corporate-speak and jargon in various written communication. It integrated nicely with Microsoft Word, and writers were astonished to see how far from transparent they really were.

A few years later, those same people decided to write a book, which outlined much of what Bullfighter tried to point out in its execution. And, much like Shel Holtz's Corporate Conversations book (which I covered in my Honorable Mentions post), as well as a few other boks on this list yet to come, there's not much in this book that is groundbreaking - but, we've created a pretty deep pool of corporate-speak; it's less important to find innovative ways to communicate; and far better to keep reinforcing the concept of natural conversations.

In the first chapter, Fugere, etc., outlines a sample corporate communication that we all face each day when we go to work:

After extensive analysis of the economic factors and trends facing our industry, we have concluded that a restructuring is essential to maintaining competitive position. A task force has been assembled to review the issues and opportunities, and they will report back with a work plan for implementing the mission-critical changes necessary to transform our company into a more agile, customer-focused enterprise.

If we could throw in a "leverage," a "core competencies" and a reference to "low-hanging fruit," we would hit on nearly every instance of corporate speak.

The first chapter of this book doesn't try to lull you into seeing its point -- it jumps out at you, and attacks the concepts we've grown to accept, and then helps you break them down. They identify four 'traps' that writers fall into when writing - obscurity (the "empty calories" of business communication - long, heady words that mean less than the shorter words that could have (and should have) been chosen, anonymity (the stripping away of all personality in communication), hard-selling (over-promising and relying on focusing on the positive as compared to focusing on the real), and tedium (avoiding any details in writing).

In fact, you could argue that three of those four traps are all inter-related. They all deal with a lack of natural conversation - something that makes all the difference in the world. At my last company, they deduced that the number-one influencer over our company getting a sale, compared to another company, was our relationship with the company -- the personal connections we made with the colleagues at that company. Clearly, those relationships didn't form or nurture through communications that featured the type of writing above ... it's safer to say that those relationships formed through natural, mutually-respected communications; very similar to what this book proposes.

This book is chock full of great examples of the types of writing and situations that qualify under those four traps (and, better still, it provides greater examples of situations that don't qualify and compares the two). It slices and dices the concept of using email as a business tool (and, finally relents to say, perhaps there is a place for email; but certainly not the way it's currently used.

Perhaps the most basic of all tenets is repeated over and over in this book. The idea of "Show, Don't Tell" is one of the most elementary concepts to writing. In the chapter on Tedium, Fugere etc. include a real excerpt from a Fortune 500 CEO's message to the organization:

We continue to be recognized as one of the best places to work in America. Our human resources programs are being copied by others for their innovation and effectiveness.

Perhaps, like me, initially, you didn't see anything wrong with that - and, in truth, there's isn't anything *wrong* with that. But, it certainly can be better. As the book points out, the interesting part is that the executive was speaking the truth; the company is an HR leader, but rather than simply saying this, he should have demonstrated the truth - not through a boring recitation of mind-numbing statistics, but with a couple of stories that make the point. Where's the data that proves these statements? Third-party recommendations? Internal surveys? Which companies are copying the company and how does the company *know* other companies are copying them?

The art of not speaking like an idiot is one that takes time to learn. It doesn't happen overnight; not with the amount of training we've all had. As a great first step, I ranked this book #4 on my list of Top 5 Books for Communicators and Business People.