Tim Phillips - Talk Normal: Stop the Business Speak, Jargon and Waffle

This ebook published in 2011 by

Kogan Page Limited

120 Pentonville Road

London N1 9JN

UK

www.koganpage.com

Tim Phillips, 2011

E-ISBN 978 0 7494 6365 6

Contents

Talk Normal facilitates information delivery through multiple media formats and monetises eyeballs

London, UK, Mar 30, 2011/TalkNormalWire Talk Normal ( http://talknormal.co.uk ), 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. Utilising multiple delivery channels matches eyeballs to content in an optimised and diversified platform: while retaining unity of purpose, the paper-based variant can reach Talk Normal partners who face electrical or data-access challenges, and additionally it interfaces with partners who want to make proactive moves to Talknormalise their jargon portfolios. It will also expedite the creation of enhanced revenue streams by monetising Talk Normals attention endowment.

Talk Normals chief solution advocate, Tim Phillips, commented that Many people ask me what this means to me. It means Ive written a book about my blog so I can earn some money.

The blog that inspired this book was born out of frustration and, lets face it, anger. I cant dress it up as a pleasant emotion.

I have spent 20 years as a journalist, but not as one of the famous ones. Im the sort that gets the opportunity to interview the deputy assistant director of sales for the Northern region, because the CEO has better things to do. I have to wade through the unfiltered thoughts of unreadable lawyers to work out what they just said, so I can interpret it for people for whom it really matters, but who dont speak fluent lawyer. I review thousands of words written for websites, and at the end have to call the person who commissioned me because Im still not sure what the company actually does.

Like you, Im swamped by e-mail, much of which I cant understand. I go to conferences where I cant keep my mind on the presentations, understand their diagrams, or work out what my take away is. I take part in conference calls, where we cant say what we mean, though not for lack of time: Talk Normal readers report three-hour calls, which they use as an opportunity to tidy their desks or sharpen their pencils, occasionally brought back to earth when their opinions are sought on a conversation they havent been following.

At this point, its best to say that we should follow it up in a sidebar meeting, or take it offline. Thats what these meetings are for: the opportunity for everyone to admit they werent listening, after the boss has gone, and try to piece together what we missed. You dont need me to tell you that it shouldnt be like this.

Sometimes, trapped on a conference call that wont finish, I mute myself so I can scream with frustration loud enough to bring my wife running into my office, full of concern. Once I forgot to press the mute button: it wasnt just my wife that was worried for my well-being.

So I started to write a blog called Talk Normal for people who felt the same way. Many of my friends and colleagues, and some new acquaintances, joined in, and sometimes forwarded my posts to others, who subscribed, and e-mailed me to ask for a post on the thing that really, really irritated them.

They were confused by words that people around them used every day, and some of them admitted that they used the same words when they didnt know what they meant. They were bored at work, and when they went home they were driven crazy by salespeople. They shouted at the advertisements on their televisions, and at political robots on the radio who couldnt give a straight answer. They also wanted to do something about it, but didnt know where to start.

Thats the point of this book. Ive pulled out some of the problems, and interviewed some of the people who do a great job in solving them. Ive included lots of things that have worked for me, when I have helped companies and individuals who came to me. And Ive made fun of a lot of people because there are a lot of people who deserve it.

Being a Talknormaliser has also made work more fun: people started to say to me: I hope you dont put this in your blog, after theyd said something particularly ridiculous. (I have made a point of including as much as I can. This may be, as the old joke puts it, one of the longest career suicides in history.) It gave me a reason to be interested in the dullest conversations, just in case there was something I could use. It even gave me a reason to use Twitter.

If youre a regular reader of the blog, you might recognise some of the content, repurposed and reordered. Other parts of it, especially the practical bits which try to help, are new. The book is roughly divided into sections on jargon, work, the media and marketing, with ideas on how to make your world better, but that doesnt mean you have to start at page 1.

The book uses my own insider jargon: Talknormalism and Talknormalisation. Ive come up with three guiding principles, which seem to be sensible. I cant guarantee I always succeed, but I try, and I think others should too.

1. Try to be understood by everyone whos listening

When youre not, you create an in group and an out group, who can hear you, but not understand. Thats always been a function of language and of jargon especially. It conveys power and status on people who know the lingo. Or, if you prefer (I do), it robs the people who dont know whats going on of power and status.

We like to do this, because we are tribal. It also makes us feel comfortable to show off our knowledge, or to compete to see who knows the most in a meeting. It doesnt help the others.

Sometimes I train people to talk to journalists or, more accurately, to talk to the people who journalists write for. Often they ask me to teach them about spin, a word I hate, because it makes deception sound smart. I suggest that we try to find a way for them to communicate with people who are curious, but who arent experts.

It is remarkable how many people, even in senior management positions, have never thought specifically about this. Maybe they have forgotten that non-experts exist, because as they spend more time at work, and more of their friends do the same job, and more people are afraid to admit that they dont understand, their in group becomes their universe. They have no idea how small it is.

Talknormalisation expands that universe.

2. Stop trying to sound clever for no reason

The temptation to sound like a person who knows something isnt just damaging to you; its insulting to real experts, who are often very good at using common language to make complex problems clear. Anyone can take a difficult thing and make it sound confusing. You dont need to be an expert to do that.

On the other hand, its an understandable defensive reaction when youre under pressure. Often I find myself in a meeting where the conversation spirals off into technical gibberish, or disappears down an obscure rathole, because two people (its a guy thing, admit it) are fighting for unspoken dominance.