Jargon busting tool cuts out the bull
Jargon busting tool cuts out the bull
Are you being incentivised to repurpose your company's core competency and utilise it in a synergistic business context to optimise results – or something like that – on a regular basis?
If so, you'll be mightily relieved to hear that Deloitte Consulting has come up with a software package designed to eradicate unnecessary jargon from corporate speak. What's more – it's available for free.
Entitled Bullfighter, the program searches documents for jargon and unnecessarily complex language. Once installed, the Bullfighter toolbar appears in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents and works much like the spell check feature. The software scans documents for egregious bull, flogs the author for trying to use those words, suggests replacements and then assigns a Bull Composite score.
Deloitte used the tool to examine a wide range of communications from companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and found that straight-talking companies outperform companies that use vague, unclear communications.
"We’ve had it with repurposeable, value added knowledge capital and robust, leveragable mindshare," says Paul Lee, Principal at Deloitte Consulting. “If Corporate Australia wants to restore public trust, it must start speaking and writing more clearly. Less empty rhetoric about openness, honesty and accountability and more straight talk."
Deloitte is hoping that the introduction of Bullfighter will shatter the credibility of business jargon.
"We're just as guilty as the next consultant when it comes to using words like paradigm, bandwidth and leverage, but we're committed to straight talk as a way of doing business – and Bullfighter is helping us get there."
Bullfighter can be downloaded, for free, at www.dc.com/bullfighter.
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