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Talk Normal
I'm at a website, Twitter or Facebook page, and I can't figure out what the company does.
Oh, it's clear that it optimizes, leverages, and enhances. It even facilitates. But, what is its product or service? I have no idea.
This can't be good for business.
No industry has been immune to the ravages of business speak, and it's become an even bigger problem since they've all incorporated high-tech gobbledygook into their useless language.
When no one can figure out if you're a publisher, distributor, publicist, marketer, or a bookseller, it's time to stop optimizing, leveraging, enhancing, and yes, even facilitating.
In his latest book, the helpful and amusing Talk Normal: Stop the Business Speak, Jargon and Waffle (Kogan Page, 2011), which grew out of his popular blog, Talk Normal, British journalist Tim Phillips illustrates the global problem immediately with a Foreword that uses business speak to parody a press release announcing the publication of his book, though it's not nearly as impossible to understand as most actual press releases.
From the Foreword:
"Talk Normal, the leading solution for information clarity optimisation and humour-based jargon-mitigation strategies, has announced that it will henceforth facilitate information delivery through multiple media formats.
"The expanded service offering encompasses a paper-based added value offering which leverages content originated in the pre-existing electronic service delivery method."
Phillips writes in his Introduction that his Talk Normal blog "that inspired this book was born out of frustration and, let's face it, anger. I can't dress it up as a pleasant emotion."
In his work as a business journalist, he writes that he'll read "thousands of words written for websites, and at the end have to call the person...because I'm still not sure what the company actually does."
This business speak problem isn't confined to the page. It's also rampant at conferences and presentations, in meetings, and even phone calls.
When he started his blog, Phillips heard from people who "were confused by words that people around them used every day," he writes, "and some of them admitted that they used the same words when they didn't know what they meant."
Talk Normal, which includes material from his blog, identifies the problems, and focuses on prevention and solutions. He writes that he also "interviewed some of the people who do a great job" solving these problems, but that he also "made fun of a lot of people - because there are a lot of people who deserve it."
Unlike so many business books that are nothing more than magazine articles padded to fill 200 pages, Talk Normal is packed with -- to use non-business speak -- great stuff.
And, all of this great stuff is in context. Phillips writes critically about the rapidly changing technological and media worlds (including blogs), whose hype, disinformation, and lack of oversight have fed these communication problems.
Phillips' press release parody says that Talk Normal "matches eyeballs to content in an optimised and diversified platform."
I say, match your eyeballs to his book as quickly as you can leverage yourself to a bookseller.
* * * * *
Everyone can relate to Talk Normal's inside jacket copy, which is also the clearest description of a business book you'll ever read:
"Tim Phillips is a desperate man, driven half crazy by the business he has been writing about for 20 years: the jargon, the waffle, the constant sales pitches, the inability to answer a direct question and then shut up. Can we not just talk like human beings while we're at work?"
Phillips is on a mission to rid the world of the meaningless, impenetrable, and unproductive business speak that plagues promotional material, websites, conferences, meetings, e-mails, phone calls, and business conversations.
In journalist Tim Phillips' blog, also called Talk Normal, you'll learn more about ridding your world of business speak. You'll also laugh. http://talknormal.co.uk
People can follow Tim Phillips on Twitter @timsvengali. He also has another website: http://timphillips.co.uk