Management Speak

"Management gurus continue to exert tremendous influence over management thinking and strategy, not only through their published works, but more significantly via the international management lecture circuit. Research suggests that public performances are critical to their popularity and success, and that the "best" gurus are all highly skilled in persuasive communication techniques. This book examines techniques, both verbal and non-verbal, used by gurus to communicate their messages and identifies several additional techniques which enhance the gurus' reputations as highly effective orators. It focuses on video recordings of public lectures given by Tom Peters, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Kenneth Blanchard, Daniel Goleman, Gary Hamil, Charles Handy and Peter Senge who are all renowned for their public performances and the impact they have had on organizational life. Challenging and original, this text provides a unique insight into the management guru industry and the persuasive skills of some its leading proponents." -- Jacket.

Our organizations are flooded with empty talk. We are constantly "going forward" to lands of "deliverables", stopping off on the "journey" to "drill down" into "best practice". Being an expert at using management speak has become more important in corporate life than delivering long lasting results. The upshot is that meaningless corporate jargon is killing our organizations. In this book, management scholar the author argues we need to call this empty talk what it is: bullshit. The book looks at how organizations have become vast machines for manufacturing, distributing and consuming bullshit. It follows how the meaningless language of management has spread through schools, NGOs, politics and the media. Business Bullshit shows you how to spot business bullshit, considers why it is so popular, and outlines the impact it has on organizations and the people who work there. It also outlines what we can do to minimise bullshit at work. The author makes a case for why organizations need to avoid empty talk and reconnect with core activities.

Tim Phillips has been a journalist for 20 years, and during that time he has been slowly driven crazy by bad spokespeople: the jargon, the evasiveness, the inability to make a point or to answer a direct question. Now that every company has a small army dedicated to communications, the problem seems to be getting worse. That's why we should stop thinking about spin and management, and start concentrating on talking like human beings. Is this possible? Talk Normal is an attempt to find out. Based on the author's blog, www.talknormal.co.uk it's full of excruciating examples of corporate jargon, and it will help you to steer a path to better communication, whilst coping with the worst excesses of management speak at work.

Traditional management structures, systems,and tools, intended to make the first factories of the industrial ageefficient, are now obsolete. Applying them to knowledge-work has exactly the opposite effect, causing all kinds of breakdowns. This book explains why knowledge workers have to manage themselves and tells them how to do it.

Bill Quirke demonstrates practically how businesses can use internal communication to achieve differentiation, to improve their quality, customer service, and innovation, and to manage change more effectively. He describes the why, the what and the how of internal communication - why business needs better communication to achieve its objectives, what internal communication needs to deliver to add value, and how organizations need to manage their communication for best results.

Executive Writing Skills for Managers deals with the English business writing you need at the top of your career. It focuses on writing English as a key business tool in international business which may have to be tailored for a multicultural readership. The invaluable guidance includes how to harmonize the English you and your teams use (for example, for performance evaluation, sales pitch etc) and introduces the notion of Word Power Skills 2.0 for unified writing that keeps everyone in the loop. The book is for anyone who has to excel in their English business writing and the guidance helps you understand how to write successfully for both a native or non-native English readership, avoiding the misunderstandings and other impediments to performance that can so easily arise.

Gathering customer requirements is a key activity for developing software that meets the customer's needs. A concise and practical overview of everything a requirement's analyst needs to know about establishing customer requirements, this first-of-its-kind book is the perfect desk guide for systems or software development work. The book enables professionals to identify the real customer requirements for their projects and control changes and additions to these requirements. This unique resource helps practitioners understand the importance of requirements, leverage effective requirements practices, and better utilize resources. The book also explains how to strengthen interpersonal relationships and communications which are major contributors to project effectiveness. Moreover, analysts find clear examples and checklists to help them implement best practices.