Corporate Crap

Corporate Crap: Lessons Learned from 40 Years in Corporate America takes a humorous look at the business practices that lead employees to look for new employment…like meetings, performance reviews, downsizing, and bosses from hell. And let’s not forget the esteem-sapping elements like dress codes, task forces, brainstorming, and engagement surveys; flip charts, org charts, hard stops, and hard-ons. Each chapter includes personal anecdotes, quotes from business experts, and the latest research to answer the burning question: If companies truly believe employees are their most valuable resource, why do they treat them like crap? In Corporate Crap, readers will learn: · How companies are trying to shorten meetings by making everyone stand and other forms of torture. · Why the founder of Second City Works calls Tina Fey “a genius boss.” · How the author burned his first professional bridge in his first-ever exit interview. · Why 700 million vacation days went unused last year. (What is wrong with you people?) · The roots of “at the end of the day” and other common expressions. · Why companies don’t call employees “employees” anymore – and how it can backfire on them. · How hiring managers are affected by stereotypes – and not always how you’d think. · Why companies’ obsession with labeling employees as introverts or extroverts is a complete waste of time. · The biggest problem companies have firing people. · Why the idea that “no idea is a bad idea” is a bad idea. · What people really do during conference calls. There are lessons to be learned here: lessons that will entertain and inform anyone who has ever worked for a large corporation. Lessons learned from 40 years of Corporate Crap!

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.

From bestselling writer David Graeber—“a master of opening up thought and stimulating debate” (Slate)—a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs…and their consequences. Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After one million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. There are hordes of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. “Clever and charismatic” (The New Yorker), Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation and “a thought-provoking examination of our working lives” (Financial Times).

This caustically funny Webster’s of the workplace cuts to the true meaning of the inane argot spouted in cubicles and conference rooms across the land. It’s time to face the facts: We live in the Golden Age of Bullshit. And as anyone who has ever worked in an office knows, the corporate world is a veritable sea of B.S.—and we are all drowning in it. Thank God for Lois Beckwith, an actual human being with the courage and moral fiber to cut through the crap (so to speak) and give us citizens of the working world the lowdown on what all this corporate lingua franca actually means. Breathe easy. The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit will make your job a whole lot easier, telling you how to get ahead (kissing ass, playing golf), avoid annoying colleagues (use caller ID), and ride the elevator without ruining your career (if you gossip, use pronouns, and never talk to the CEO). If you have ever wondered what a mindshare is (some kind of drug?), puzzled over the meaning of words like impactful or incentivize (here’s a clue: those are not actual words), or been faced with a glassy-eyed zombie of a coworker singing the praises of synergy, then The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit is for you! Forget what you learned in Bschool—this handy reference guide will teach you everything you need to know about the empty, enraging, and just plain stupid gobbledygook that masquerades as “communication” in the working world.

The In-Your-Face, Results-Focused, No-"Kumbaya" Guide to Social Media for Business! Detailed techniques for increasing sales, profits, market share, and efficiency. Specific solutions for brand-building, customer service, R & D, and reputation management. Facts, statistics, real-world case studies, and rock-solid metrics

This caustically funny Webster’s of the workplace cuts to the true meaning of the inane argot spouted in cubicles and conference rooms across the land. It’s time to face the facts: We live in the Golden Age of Bullshit. And as anyone who has ever worked in an office knows, the corporate world is a veritable sea of B.S.—and we are all drowning in it. Thank God for Lois Beckwith, an actual human being with the courage and moral fiber to cut through the crap (so to speak) and give us citizens of the working world the lowdown on what all this corporate lingua franca actually means. Breathe easy. The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit will make your job a whole lot easier, telling you how to get ahead (kissing ass, playing golf), avoid annoying colleagues (use caller ID), and ride the elevator without ruining your career (if you gossip, use pronouns, and never talk to the CEO). If you have ever wondered what a mindshare is (some kind of drug?), puzzled over the meaning of words like impactful or incentivize (here’s a clue: those are not actual words), or been faced with a glassy-eyed zombie of a coworker singing the praises of synergy, then The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit is for you! Forget what you learned in Bschool—this handy reference guide will teach you everything you need to know about the empty, enraging, and just plain stupid gobbledygook that masquerades as “communication” in the working world.

Bullshit isn’t what it used to be. Now, two science professors give us the tools to dismantle misinformation and think clearly in a world of fake news and bad data. “A modern classic . . . a straight-talking survival guide to the mean streets of a dying democracy and a global pandemic.”—Wired Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news abound and it’s increasingly difficult to know what’s true. Our media environment has become hyperpartisan. Science is conducted by press release. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. We are fairly well equipped to spot the sort of old-school bullshit that is based in fancy rhetoric and weasel words, but most of us don’t feel qualified to challenge the avalanche of new-school bullshit presented in the language of math, science, or statistics. In Calling Bullshit, Professors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West give us a set of powerful tools to cut through the most intimidating data. You don’t need a lot of technical expertise to call out problems with data. Are the numbers or results too good or too dramatic to be true? Is the claim comparing like with like? Is it confirming your personal bias? Drawing on a deep well of expertise in statistics and computational biology, Bergstrom and West exuberantly unpack examples of selection bias and muddled data visualization, distinguish between correlation and causation, and examine the susceptibility of science to modern bullshit. We have always needed people who call bullshit when necessary, whether within a circle of friends, a community of scholars, or the citizenry of a nation. Now that bullshit has evolved, we need to relearn the art of skepticism.

#1 New York Times bestseller Featured on The Daily Show and 60 Minutes The acclaimed book that illuminates our world and its politics by revealing why bullshit is more dangerous than lying One of the most prominent features of our world is that there is so much bullshit. Yet we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, how it’s distinct from lying, what functions it serves, and what it means. In his acclaimed bestseller On Bullshit, Harry Frankfurt, who was one of the world’s most influential moral philosophers, explores this important subject, which has become a central problem of politics and our world. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the bullshitter’s capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that the truth matters. Because of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. Remarkably prescient and insightful, On Bullshit is a small book that explains a great deal about our time.

A serious but entertaining expose of business lingo at it's very worst. In the same vein as Don Watson's 'Death Sentence' this book strives to clear away the fog of corporate crap that not only confuses the public & customers but, Dr Jacoby argues, also undermines a businesses ability to see itself clearly. This book will appeal to any business person wanting to introduce clarity to their company & to any member of the general public who hates the gobbledygook that surrounds us every day. A great book that should find it's way into every business library.