076: Josh Bernoff - Cut The BS Out of Your Language

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Hi. It's great to be here.

Yeah, so glad to have you here. So we're going to go through it in getting ready for the show. I'm anxious for folks to hear you talk. You were one of our great speakers at the Gazelle's growth summit that we just had. So I'm excited to have you. I think your message is really powerful. The stories that you have to share, the stuff. So let's get into it. How did you into this? What's the genesis of this for you?

Well, after being an executive in startups, as you mentioned, I spent 20 years as an analyst at Forrester Research. The focus on there was producing reports about the future of technology which people paid a lot of money for. And so you had to really be impactful and get to the point. Of course, the other thing that happened to Me there was that I got briefed and got emails and press releases from hundreds and hundreds of technology startups. So when I left that company and I said, what do I have to share with the world? I realized that really most of the communication that we get is bullshit. I figured that of all those press releases I got approximately 0.02% of all of the words in there actually had any meaning for me. That's an astounding amount of waste. So I'm on a crusade here to help people to learn to communicate in as powerful and direct and clear a way as possible. And based on what I've. I've surveyed people, 81% of them say that poorly written material wastes a lot of their time. And I'm here to help you figure out how not to waste the time of the people you work with and you're trying to communicate with.

I was an advisor to a CEO years ago, and this guy, he was in the financial and insurance world and he spoke everything in jargon. Absolutely everything was jargon. A lot of it was business jargon. But then there was also a fair amount of sports jargon mixed in. He would ramble on for a few minutes. I'd be like, what the F are you talking about? I have no idea what you said. That just was all one strung together thing. And there's an old Star Trek episode, right? I'm a total Trek geek where they meet this alien group and they can't actually say anything directly. They only make references to other stories. And I'm not a big enough geek to remember their reference to that. But it was fascinating because they eventually learned to understand them because they got the words but the structure way of speaking. And it's like that. Now I'll hear people. There are terms that I hear all the time, like best practices and whatever. I'm like, it's nonsense. It doesn't sort of mean anything.

So let me give you and your viewers and listeners a way to think about jargon. So people use jargon because somewhere in their head they think that everybody thinks this way, uses this kind of terminology. But when you're using jargon, you create this circle. There's this little circle in the middle of the people who understand that those are the insiders. And outside of that circle are all the people who are like, well, what exactly are you trying to say here? And if you want to connect with your audience, if you're using language that the audience doesn't make sense of or doesn't connect with, then you've lost them. So the more jargon you use, the smaller that circle becomes and the less you're actually going to be able to get your meaning across.

Well, what about though? I totally get that. Right. So I speak in jargon. We have different ideas about what it means. Some of it you don't know what it means and then we're left without actually communicating. But what about when we overuse something and then its intention or meaning sort of is diluted by if I throw out value proposition, best practice and whatever like that. And don't we sort of miss the point even if we both know what that means? It's sort of diluted by having been reduced to some common phrase or term.

Well, when I look at the elements of how people write, I look specifically at some of the worse things, which are not only jargon, but passive voice and meaningless qualifiers, you know, like huge and deeply and stuff like that. And the more of that that you use, the more the person listening or reading it is thinking this person's just making stuff up. I'm not getting anything useful out of this. The more clear and direct and the more you can use language that's common and that people understand, the more it's like, oh, I can trust him, I can trust her. They actually are talking human. So it's not just a question of words that people don't understand. It's a question of sentences that are bloated up with this stuff that communicate that you're actually full of bs.

I think I'm probably guilty of this a lot, and mostly in the world of hyperbole. Right. That exaggerations. And I remember a very embarrassing moment in a corporate job where I was about to speak to the CEO, my boss of a multibillion dollar company. And. And I had put in. I think I actually put it in one of my slides, wildly successful or something like that. And somebody says that is just total nonsense. On what basis? Where did you decide that? Like what's that founded in? And I think as a sort of a. And probably a lot of our audience are founder CEOs who are on the persuasive side of things, more than. Than the engineers and that kind of thing. And they're used to pitching and promoting, right?

Yeah. So let me talk a little bit about that. These words that people use to make things sound more powerful words like incredible and wildly successful, these are what I call weasel words. So weasel words specifically means a qualifier or intensifier that doesn't have a specific meaning. So you're wildly Successful. How would you measure that? When someone says, I'm deeply concerned, is that actually more concern than being regular concerned? It's not that you can't use these words. You wouldn't go very far in business without using the word very. But the more they pile up, the more you sound like you're full of crap. And it's interesting that they have exactly the opposite effect. There's a quote that I analyzed on my blog. When Marissa Meyer sold Yahoo to Verizon, she sent this email out to everybody in her staff, and it's all about how incredibly successful they are, what incredible people they are, and incredible, incredible, incredible. And you're like, you know, at some point, it's like, no one's buying this stuff. So the thing I want people to take away is that the more of those words that you use, the less credible you are.

So a little bit sparingly, right?

Yes, yes. And that's really the message of all of these things that I talk about to avoid, and that is that you want to reduce the amount. It's like sugar in your diet. It's not like a little bit of sugar is going to kill you, but the more sugar you have, the worse it is. So you want to just cut that back to a small, reasonable level. And when you have a choice, don't use it. Use numbers instead.

Yeah. Facts and numbers. So two things I think that I'm immediately reminded of. I was at a conference recently, and a sort of a teen, young adult hero of mine was a keynote speaker, early keynote speaker in the program. Henry Rollins. Right. And for our listeners who know Henry Rollins, legendary punk lead of Black Flag, Provocative and explosive and powerful. But an hour and a half of that is. I was. I was angry and drained and annoyed. And I'm like, my wife's there. And I'm like, oh, you're going to really dig this guy. He's awesome, and it's just powerful. And he's like. And after 30 minutes of him being intense and everything was. And I was just done with all of it.

Right.

And then at the same time, though, there's a book, really dated book, by a political speechwriter. Speak like Churchill, stand like Lincoln or something like that. Do you know this book? He was like a speechwriter for Nixon, I want to say. And he talks about a number of really powerful techniques, like open with a provocative fact or something. And so I used to lead a leadership program, and I would open in the beginning. I'd be like, look, one in four of you will not complete this program, statistically speaking. So look around the room, figure out who that person is. Right. One in 25%, one in four. But when you change it in that, then it creates a picture for something. Right. Powerful.

Yeah. One of the things I talk most about in the book is how short people's attention spans are. Now, based on the survey I did of people who write even a little bit in their work, people spend a total of 46 hours a week reading and writing. So it's more than a full time job. And anything that you inject into that stream, they only have a little bit of time for. This means, as you said, when you start off, you need to get right to the point. Our sales are down, we need to adjust. Okay, now I'm going to pay attention. New personnel policy. You need to pick your insurance carrier in the next week. Okay, I know what to get to. And the natural tendency people have is to slowly get into things deductively. First this, then this, then this, then that. You've lost them. You have to start right at the beginning. Don't bury the lead.

Yeah, don't bury the lead. First big point. So tell us, actually going to that. Tell us about your Microsoft execration.

Okay, yeah, this is a really great example. So people may remember a few years back that Microsoft acquired the mobile phone division of Nokia and along with that they acquired the executive in charge of it, whose name was Stephen Elop. Well, that was, not to put too fine a point on it, perhaps the worst acquisition of all time. And it rapidly became clear that they were going to have to make some changes. So Stephen Elop wrote an email to the tens of thousands of people reporting to him now at his division at Microsoft. And it was basically, well, hey, there's some things I need to talk to you about. Let's talk about where we're going to do engineering and what kind of products we're going to emphasize. It went on for 1100 words. Now three quarters of the way through that, there's a sentence that says, oh, by the way, as a result of this, we will need to eliminate 12,500 positions. And I'm sorry about that, but we'll be in touch about the details. So I just want you to imagine you're at Microsoft, right? You're in this division. And most people are not even going to read 1100 words written in bald paragraphs. But a few people noticed it. And then of course they just turn to the person next to them and say, oh my God, 12,000 of us are going to Lose our jobs.

Right.

Everything in that entire email is irrelevant. He completely lost control of the message because he buried the lead 3/4 the way through an 1100 word email. Get to the point, get to the things people want to talk about as quickly as possible. That's what you have to do now.

Yeah. So open with the big thing, deal with the bad news or the shocking thing or the whatever.

Yep. Well, and I think you look at, write what you're going to write and then say, all right, what's the takeaway from this? And put that at the top. And believe me, you'll have your chance to justify it afterwards. You don't need to lead people into it. You need to say, this is a thing you need to know. Oh really? How do you justify that? Okay, now I'll get to it. I'll just mention one thing as an aside here. I put that memo in the book and I actually narrated the audio book. So that meant that I got to that point, I'm like, oh man, I have to read aloud 1100 words of crap. So I said at the beginning of that, hey, you can skip this if you need to. And then I read it at like twice normal speed just to be kind to the poor people listening to the audiobook.

Well, when you listen to audiobooks and things like that, you can adjust the speed for the most part.

Part.

Most of the time.

That makes just as little sense at twice normal speed as it did at the normal speed.

Yes, yes. So it's fascinating. I think we've all done it, we've all experienced it and it's so much easier to see when it's someone else doing it than when it's you doing it. And whether it's in writing or speaking, I think it makes a big difference to think about that. And just like with business planning, start with the end and mind, where do you want to be in 10 years, in three years or whatever, then think about what you need. So if you've got a written communication, what action do you want people to do? What's the experience you want them to get from reading the thing or hearing you? What are the big takeaways? Right. And then what are the elements that are going to serve that?

Yeah. If people are going to write anything significant, whether we're talking about a 15 page report or an email that's going to be read by 800 people, you want to spend some time on it. And I recommend in the planning stages to think about four things. First is readers. Who's listening to this is it your customers, Is it your employees? The second is objective. I'll make a bold statement here, which is that the only purpose of business writing is to create a change in the reader. So the objective is what is the change you're going to make? Now they understand this policy. Now they will change their priorities, whatever it happens to be. The third thing is action. What do you want them to do? And the last thing that people don't think about as much is impression. That is, what will they think of you after this? Will they think of you as helpful, wasteful, intelligent, whatever it happens to be. So there's an acronym for that. R O A M Reader's objective. Action. Impression spells roam. Yes. And I know that impression doesn't begin with M, but I had to. Roy is hard to remember.

So readers, right, Readers.

Objective, Objective. What's the change you want to make? Action. What do you want them to do after you read it? And then impression. What will they think of you as a communicator after they read this? I mentioned the impression, I mentioned all the press releases I got. And like PR people think, well, there's no penalty for me sending lots of press releases out. But when I got enough annoying things from someone, I'm like, okay, this person is a pest. Destroyed their impression in the process of attempting to make a small amount of change in my mind.

Very clear. So what is it like now? How do you work with folks on this? How does this show up in your life? What's the application today and how do you attack this?

Well, there's basically two thrusts of the work that I do. One is that I work with companies who want to improve the writing culture in their company. Because if one person reads what I've written and says, oh, I'm going to do things differently, that's hard to implement if the person sitting next to you or your boss just doesn't understand what you're getting at. So I go in and I'll do a half day workshop with a company. And that tends to be. I often hear from people, they're like, I understand what you're saying, but the people I work with don't get it, Come in here and tell us all about this. And then they all have the right terminology and philosophy to work from. The second thing I do, which is related but very different, is I actually work with people who want to become thought leaders. They want to write a book. So if you are thinking about writing a book, I can help people figure out what are the most powerful ideas that you have. How would you structure them? How to create a proposal that would actually get somebody to publish that book? And that based on the books that I've written and what I know about writing, that's been a very big part of the work that I'm doing now. I'm working with about five different people at this point on projects of that kind.

Now we've had a variety of these other folks book in a box and speak your book type folks on, in and around the Gazelle's world, the scale up world. How is that different? Or do you work with any of those?

I haven't worked with them directly. I'm more concerned. Let me be as direct as I can about this. I am concerned with helping people actually say something worth saying. So if you bring your book idea to me, I'm more likely to say, oh, well, that's pretty boring, or oh, well, that's interesting. But that's the same thing I've heard from seven other people. And by banging on it, we will get to a point where you're like, oh, wait a minute, what you just said there, I have not heard that before. This is the unique source of insight that you have. That's what I did at Forrester Research in the last five years is what we called idea development, helping people to go from I think I have something to say to yes, now I understand what I have to say and where you go from there to publish a book, you could be working with book in a box, you can be working with the Forbes book publishing people, or you can publish it a traditional way, but you're not going to actually get any success out of that book unless you actually have something to say that people want to hear.

Well, this whole notion of content marketing, thought leadership, message oriented stuff is growing and growing and growing now right across so many businesses are impacted by it and people who never thought they were are starting to realize that they were. And there are all kinds of services out there that are doing it. But whether you're speaking or you're delivering written communication, or whether you're speaking in a video or a podcast or whatever, all of those things suffer from the same language problems that you get with. Right. Tell us about the key things that you go to work on there.

Well.

The kinds of language, the length that.

Yeah, so if we're going to focus specifically on language, we're going to look at the kind of language that people use. One of the things that I speak with people about is how to change this habit of using words that are undermining what you're trying to get across. I mentioned jargon. We mentioned the weasel words. The third type of language that really turns people off is passive voice. So this is where instead of saying, we need to make a change, you say, a change needs to be made. The problem with business communication like that is it lets people off the hook and you don't realize who's supposed to do stuff. If you read a whole page full of that, you left thinking, well, stuff is happening, but I don't know who's going to do it. I'll just tell you. I had a colleague that I worked with at Forrester, very bright guy, and he turned in the first draft of his first report, and I looked at it and I said, oh, look, here's some passive voice right here in the second sentence. So I highlighted that and wrote in the comment, you know, this is passive voice. You need to change it. Then a couple of sentences later, there's some more. So I highlighted that and I wrote, all right, this is passive voice. Each time you write a passive voice sentence, you must slap yourself. And then for the rest of the document was about 18 times, or I just highlighted, right? Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap. That guy read that. All of a sudden he realized what he was doing. And believe me, he will never write in passive voice again because he hears my voice in his head. And every time he writes a sentence like that saying, no, I have to figure out who's actually doing this. That's what I try to do with people, is to help them to become more aware of these mannerisms that they have. And in the workshops, we look at stuff that people have actually written in their company and say, all right, here's the mannerisms that you've got, and here's how they interfere with the direct and clear communication you're attempting to communicate with.

Well, it's funny, as you said that and you gave the example, I was immediately taken to the famous Kennedy speech about going to the moon. And I thought, what if he'd come out and he'd done that in a passage.

Right? So this is. Look, I can't quote that speech for you, but one thing I remember about it is that he used the word we. Right, Right. And there are two words that are extremely powerful in writing that business writers are afraid of, and they are we and you. Yeah, so we is. All right, your company want to talk specifically about how you and your employees or whatever are going to do something together. And you. Well, it depends on who you're writing to. You Might be your customers, it might be your employees. But when you say something like, we need to make a change, you should spend 70% of your day on selling and 30% of your. It's like, okay, wait a minute, he's talking to me. Yes, I have to do something here. Think about how much more effective that is than saying selling will be 30% of our day. Okay, yeah, that's somebody else.

Yes.

I'll mention one more statistic here from the survey I did. I asked people, on average, when you look at all the writing that you read every day, business writing, how effective is it on a scale from 1 to 10 average that people said was a 5.4. Then I said, of all of the writing that you do every day, how effective is that? That's a 6.9 on the same scale. Well, who's writing all of that bad stuff? Are these people? They're like the children in Lake Wobegon. They're all above average. I guess the fact is we're all responsible for this, but none of us wants to believe it. That's really the challeng is to accept that responsibility yourself and then to make those changes.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's the thing to do, is to be looking for and considering. Well, we see this again and again. I worked with a CEO recently, and I think there are variations of this that we see all the time. And the CEO's complaint was that his people were late for everything. All their deliverables are late.

Right?

Like, okay, great, so let me come in and meet with you in your office and see your team and interview some of them and observe your meetings and. And things like that. That's a common thing that I would do as a coach because I'm coaching the team, as distinct from executive coaching. I watch the CEO arrive late and unprepared for the meeting and then ramble for several hours like, okay, that's why your team's late, because they have learned from you that being late is just fine. And sort of being disorganized is fine. And not having your own shit together, that's the example that you're setting. The message given by every action. Right?

That's absolutely right. And I think when it comes to writing, people don't realize just how wasteful and time consuming it can be. I looked at an estimate. I put an estimate together by looking at all of the jobs in the Bureau of Labor Statistics and estimating how much time people spent reading in those jobs and how much of that time was wasted as a Result of poorly written material. My estimate was that that costs the U.S. economy $396 billion every year, which is 6% of all of the wages paid, because the more highly paid people are, the more likely they are to be reading. Once you start to look at writing that way, just like being late for the meeting, you begin to realize that it's like a tax on your people, that if they don't commit to clear communication, they are wasting each other's time. It's slowing you down. And fixing that is something that will make a significant change in the effectiveness of the organization.

Yeah. So it's a lot easier to start with fewer words than it is to cut them out later. Right.

Revising. It's completely wrong.

Yeah.

Well, I think if you have one page to do and you write 10, you have a big problem. Right. But it's hard for people to write short to begin with. It's unnatural. And in fact, it's often easier for people. It takes them a little while to get warmed up. They write something, then they get to the end. As long as you recognize then that you can go back and cut the stuff that's repetitive and doesn't belong in there. It's easier to get to something short by starting with something that's a little bit longer than every time you write a sentence. Say, oh, my gosh, I wonder if I should include that in there or not.

Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. No, what I was thinking more is where you started earlier, where you said, if you have this, like, using the roam process, where you've thought about what you're trying to accomplish, what impression you're trying to leave, what actions, when you start with that place, you're less likely to put as much nonsense in to begin with. You for sure have to edit out, right?

Yes, yes. And I have a trick I actually have for people.

Oh, sure.

I do this. I often do this when I'm giving speeches or workshops. I'll look at someone and I'll say, all right, who are you writing for? And they'll say something like, well, I'm writing for engineers, or, I'm writing for our customers, or I'm writing for people who are considering making an investment, whatever it is. And I say, no, no, no, I want to know. Tell me the name of one of those people. Often they'll be like, oh, yeah, well, I think Sarah is one of the people I talk to, write for regularly. I say, all right, take Sarah's picture and put it up next to your screen. When you're writing. And every time you write something and you're a little worried about whether it should be in there, say, would Sarah understand this? Is this the kind of language that Sarah uses? Would this make an impression on Sarah? It's amazing how much easier it is to write in a clear and direct way when you not only are thinking, I know who my audience is, but my trains come.

Did you hear that?

Yes. Yes, I did. When you're not only thinking. So it's easier to write in a clear and direct way when you're not only thinking of who your audience is, but you're actually. Actually able to look at them and say, all right, that's who I'm writing for.

Yeah, totally get that. So creating a clear picture, putting that investor, that target, that customer, a representative person, and personifying it. I think that's why some companies create brand avatars. This is our core customer expressed in kind of a fictional Betty Crocker fashion. But better still, if you have a real person that you can relate to, that's representative of that, that's a much richer picture than. Than the other. I have a side one like that that you may have used or tried before. And that's when I'm going to give a talk or lead a particular section of a workshop that's critical. I do it in the mirror. It's a kind of an actor's thing. So I do it in the mirror and I practice letting the. Well, just hearing the words come out of your mouth alters and also tightens up somewhat, especially if you do it a couple times and then if you add the mirror where you're actually trying to communicate with someone and you do that a couple times. A lot of other things also shift in your delivery and your presentation, your self consciousness and the efficiency of your speaking.

Yeah. I certainly think if you got something important you're going to say that rehearsing it makes a huge difference. Shouldn't be coming out of your mouth for the first time when you're in that important situation. I can't stand looking at myself in the mirror when I do that. But you're better looking than me, so perhaps it works better for you.

Well, you know, if you get past all of that. Right. My wife's like, oh, you can watch your own videos and listen to your podcast and stuff like, yeah, I'm studying it and so on. And all that discomfort I had with hearing my own voice, I got over that at 22 or something. Right?

Yeah.

So you've got a ton of resources for people that are out there, how to eliminate the toxic prose, how to tighten up the language, how to reduce the jargon. I think you've even got a list of weasel words there, don't you?

I do. They're in the book. That's the easiest way to get at this is to get my book Writing without Bullshit. My blog, WithoutBullshit.com has just passed 2 million views. In the two plus years that I've had it up there, I'm one every morning analyzing language that people are using in every possible context. Corporate language politics is a surprisingly rich source of bullshit. Yes, that's right. Well, there's always statements that I can take apart on that, some tips in there and then there's a goodies page on there that's got a bunch of downloadable resources people can use, including the book proposal that sold this book. So if you want to see what a book proposal looks like, that's in there too.

Brilliant. The book is Writing without Bullshit. Josh Bernoff is the author and our guest for today. The blog is withoutbullshit.com I think you can remember that and find that, but we will of course put it in the show notes as well for people to follow up on. If you'd like to hear topics like these to improve your leadership, help to scale up your business, you'll find us every week on itunes or wherever you get your podcast. And if you go to our website, scalingupbusiness.com you will find a list of tools and resources there to help get your team started with the scaling up process. Elevate your team, your own leadership, get your team focused and your business growing. So thanks again for being with us Josh. We'll see you all next time. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by Align, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G one more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G. That's aligntoday.com Bill G. Check it out and try it now.