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Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter's Guide |  | Authors: Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, Jon Warshawsky
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.00
Buy Used: $3.75
as of 9/6/2010 20:20 MST details
You Save: $18.25 (83%)
New (16) Used (48) Collectible (1) from $3.75
Seller: Lance Berkman
Rating:  48 reviews
Sales Rank: 123346
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 192
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0743269098
Dewey Decimal Number: 650.014
EAN: 9780743269094
ASIN: 0743269098
Publication Date: February 22, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780743269094 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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Product Description
It's Monday. Time to hit the pause button on your personality and get ready for the next meeting because, for the next five days, we'll be speaking the language of business. And, from bloated jargon and monotonous memos, to syrupy slogans and deadly dull presentations, the official language of business is bull. The second we get to work, we join the masses who trade the wit and warmth of their voice for a corporate stamp of approval and the comfort of conformity. Why Business People Speak Like Idiots exposes four traps that transform 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�" 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 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. But for you, this epidemic of bull and boredom is a real opportunity. All those human beings who went to work Monday morning want something better. They don't want disclaimers, non-promises, sugar-coated news or canned speeches. They want someone to capture their imagination, stir their enthusiasm and tell them the truth. And once you learn to recognize and rise above the four traps, you can be that voice they're looking for.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 48
Started slow; ended strong October 5, 2009
E. Anderson
The book had a slow start and I originally thought that I would not finish it because it seemed to just be a lot of opinion. Then it picked up - FAST! It had strong examples, facts, stories, appropriate quotes. By the time I was done reading it I could hardly put it down. I was telling my wife about it and using recommendations in my business. I would definitely recommend it for business people and students before going into the work force.
 If you've every said "paradigm" you need this book September 30, 2009
bookworm (michigan usa)
This is an awesome book. Cut the crap, use real words, and we'd never have to hear "paradigm" again. Any "enterprise-oriented human capital asset" (aka business person) who uses "bandwidth" to describe anything other than internet speed should be locked up until they've memorized the lessons in this book!
Exactly as listed, great purchase! September 12, 2009
S. Spain (Salina, KS)
This book is in perfect condition exactly as it was presented. Shipped quickly and arrived in great time. Well worth every cent.
If you don't like this book, it's because it hits too close to home. July 3, 2009
Illy Snob
I love this book. It cuts to the chase and provides practical advice for making presentations and meetings interesting. Page after page, it will keep the reader laughing, because he or she will recognize his or her own Crimes Against Plain Speaking. I have used its lessons many times since reading the book, and I can say it has made me a better presenter.
Hold that Jargon February 15, 2009
Roberto Blatt (Sao Paulo, SP Brazil)
"Hold that jargon!". Monty Phyton couldn't have done better in destroying all that jargon we so much hate. "Downsizing", "reengineering", "aligning", "holistic", all these words get a paradigm shift (oops, sorry!); the authors have pushed the envelope (sorry again) in depicting the four capital traps in the language of business: obscurity, anonymity, hard-sell and the tedium trap. They do that with humor, as when they offer us a "Special Bonus Feature", the Stupid Generic Photograph (SGP), which, as they put it, "add mass without content at no additional cost" to PowerPoint presentations. They really know how to make us think outside the box (oh, no, not again!) and show us the thoughtware (that's enough!) we can get from people who show their humanity, like Warren Buffett and his plain English speeches when admitting his mistakes or from people like Virgin's Richard Branson, who "readily admits to his dyslexia and is generally ill at ease when interviewed in public". At the start, the book sounded repetitive, but, a few pages later, it started to sound very funny and instructive. A must read!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 48
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