foreign fluent in the language of BS otherwise known as business speak or depending on your point of view what is BS or business speak business speak is the language we use on the job and only on the job to describe and Define things for instance at home I might say to my son it's time to go are you ready while at work I'm more likely to say to a colleague is it scalable you can give me a baseline ETA on departure we need to leave ASAP right I was first introduced to the language of BS through my wife she's a chief marketing officer for a global consulting firm and one day a few years back at home she was doing a conference call on speaker and she started to use the language of BS I had never heard this woman speak this language before I was concerned she was a spy she used terms like boil the ocean tiger team SWAT analysis afterwards she translated those terms to me in in phrases that a human being can actually understand and I did what every good partner does in a solid marriage I made fun of that word relentlessly I may not make as much money as my wife's colleagues I certainly don't have the degrees they do but I know a messed up thing when I hear it and I devoted years of my life to compiling researching and then writing a BS dictionary yes thank you thank you I can now tell my kids that an auditorium full of people applauded me for all this worthless work I did over the last few years so in the words of BS with this expertise I say to you that my presentation to you today the CTA of this DIY tedx talk if you will is a USP on the rise of BS in our wiffum world and how we can make this Intel less scalable during the fourth Industrial Revolution if you don't understand what I've just said that's okay you don't speak BS if you do understand what I've just said God help you yes so let me give it another shot I'll translate that in more common words the call to action of my presentation to you is to make the point that business speak is on the rise in our globalized economy but there are simple things we can all do in our day-to-day jobs with that language to take the out of BS so what I present to you is three ways of how to take the BS out of business speak first you've been sitting for a while so let me pull the room I'm going to get your feet working here I want you to stomp your feet honestly stomp your feet if you know what the BS term ebitda means nice okay maybe got some CEOs some accountants in the room never know okay now stomp your feet if you know what earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortization means a little bit more to be honest I'm sure some of you with amortization were like I don't know if I should stop right okay now stomp your feet if you know what income is before applying accounting and tax write-offs to it close call but I'm going to make a judgment call here the loudest stomping in this theater got to the last definition of the same thing ebitda is basically income before you apply accounting tax write-offs to it and notice that the most common language got the biggest agreement from this audience but here's the problem with BS it is not a common language business speak is the language of the elite not surprisingly when my co-author and I Tim Ito researched about 300 business speak terms for this dictionary one of the reoccurring themes is the people who created this language and speak it most fluently a large majority of them are people who look like me a bunch of white guys I'd say that's not surprisingly because I want you to think the first and second Industrial Revolution when white guys like John D Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie ruled the business world and it's true today when research shows that 90 percent of all worldwide Fortune 500 company CEOs are white guys still so here's a takeaway for you in the room if you want to hang with today's wild white male tycoons Bill Gates Elon Musk Jeff Bezos Warren Buffett it would benefit you to get very Adept and able to speak BS but there's a drawback to that approach I have a friend Emily who works at a theater company in the United States this theater company does corporate entertainment keynote speeches for conferences she started her job a few years ago and had her first big meeting to try to make a sale it was with a big Oil Company in Dallas and across the boardroom from her were five old white guys and Emily noticed very early on that they did something very interesting with their language choices they started to use BS words that they knew she didn't know now why would they do that three possible reasons I talked to Emily we've worked out some theories one these guys didn't know any better and Economist Robin Hogarth had coined the term the curse of knowledge to describe this phenomenon it may be simply that they're so expert at their language they they don't appreciate anymore what it's like to not know these things and they just spoke off the top of their head as a corporate consultant for public speaking the companies that I work for the reason I give them this advice is because of that phenomenon I will tell them if you have a lot of BS in your four walls and it could be unique just to your company or it's just general acronyms and things you use in the business world and you have a new employee maybe give them a directory of some of these terms so instead of walking into a meeting and smiling and nodding and then frantically Googling afterwards what the hell does ebitda mean that they'll know second reason why these five oil Executives possibly handled Emily this way they wanted to parse out from her how much they knew how much she knew about the business instead of asking her directly excuse me Emily can you tell me how much experience you have in our industry and let's go from there they used BS as a way to keep Emily and them apart rather than bring them together third possible reason these oil Executives handled it that way they were just jerks and Emily thinks that's the answer because shortly after her initial conversation she brought in a more senior male colleague lo and behold the five oil Executives warm up they'd cut out the BS and a deal is struck shortly thereafter so that's something for us to think about as our first takeaway of how to take the BS out of business speak use BS to be inclusive and not exclusive in other words don't be a jerk if you can explain something in common language that's a victory Leonardo da Vinci was once quoted as saying Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication the edit is the genius not spouting off all these big words which brings me to my second takeaway of how to take BS out of business speak let's get those feet stomping again how many of you stomp your feet if you know what the word de minimis means okay good I don't feel so alone because I was alike a lot of you did not stomp your feet a few years back as was mentioned in my intro I used to work for The Daily Show with John Stewart for those of you don't know it is a comedy show that's nationally broadcast in America that satirized the news of the day and I was interviewing an accountant about a tax issue that he used the word de minimis to describe and I interrupted him right there and I said Domin what what the f does that mean and he said it means small immaterial it's insignificant to which I said well why didn't you just say that and he said in a moment of honesty he said uh just thought it sounded good and the reality is it does sound it's kind of a cool word de minimis and I'm guilty of doing it too especially in a business meeting where I'm unsure of my status in that room I may use ebitda right just to show hey I can hang I can hang but here's the thing about communication you know what's really cool about good communication especially in the business world is when you can express fresh ideas without using stale business cliches and big words that people in the room don't really understand so that's my second way to take the BS out of business language for you to drive this home uh even further a lady that I worked with in my corporate work works for a big American company one of the biggest companies in American if not the world she works for bosses that use a ton of business cliches so much so to keep herself sane she told me she created homemade BS Bingo cards replace the numbers in the Bingo cards with the phrases that they used over and over again so when they turned up the BS in a conference call she tuned out and tried to play Bingo B think outside the box I change agent and Paradigm Shift right so these are things for us to think about that if we're using BS a lot of it in our business speak it may be like Shakespeare said Sound and Fury signifying nothing which brings me to my final takeaway of how to take BS out of business speak let's stick with Shakespeare Shakespeare has given us some great BS speak and stuff that allows itself to exist outside of business speak in the English language wild goose chase think about that it's kind of a weird reference that's from Shakespeare break the ice in a pickle all from Shakespeare the good news is when we hear references like this from Shakespeare a lot of us in the world at least have a little bit of an experience with Shakespeare and we have context clues we can figure it out but I want you to think of other cultural touch points that aren't as common as Shakespeare I'm going to put up some phrases that are commonly used in America and if you know it's common origin just yell it out if you're wrong it's okay we'll edit it out of the video swing for the fences out of left field rain check off base pinch hitter right off the bat anybody know baseball there you go I'm gonna put up another list of phrases again you tell me what the common origin is blind leading the blind by the skin of your teeth fly in the ointment writing is on the wall the Bible I I suppose you have a Bible you're reading scripture between speakers like good Christian okay yeah you're right no rest for the wicked also comes from the Bible here's my point think of the global economy now and the majority of people on this Earth don't have daily experience with American baseball and they don't read the Bible but you're sitting in a business meeting saying we have no we have no time no rest for the wicked the writing is on the wall do they know what you're talking about clap your hands if you've ever heard the American phrase drinking the Kool-Aid great anybody who clapped their hands what does it mean it's it what's that we'll get there we'll get there you've read my script you know where I'm going what does writing the cool writing or drinking the Kool-Aid what does that mean succumbing to peer pressure it's kind of in there it's it's it's accepting something without question just sort of like I did with you guys saying stop your feet you're just like a shirt or whatever right yes and to the balcony's response here's the origin story of drinking the Kool-Aid and the reason why I bring this up is because it's important to know the origin story of some of our BS Jim Jones this cult leader he's adorable 1978 he has a great idea all of his hundreds of followers he's going to give them a delicious drink that's wonderful Jim Jones to do he flavors it with something called flavor a Which is popular at the time it's later confused in history with more popular flavored drink in America called Kool-Aid but Jim made a bad mistake with that Kool-Aid man he laced it with cyanide hundreds of followers drink the cyanide and die 1978 I think it's almost 800 people died that's the origin story of drinking the Kool-Aid the reason I bring that up is because a European audience you're like what is Kool-Aid also if you're born Beyond 1978 you may not even know what this is who is this guy what are you talking about mass suicide a cult with Kool-Aid drinking the Kool-Aid and there are other BS phrases that fall in this category we've lost the origin story it gets muddied think of Ted Talk the internet if you type who founded Ted or where did Ted come from it's a person on the internet it's technology entertainment design that's what Ted Talks stands for think of the BS phrase piggyback you ever seen two pigs with one Pig on on its back I mean outside of a sexual act I haven't either here's why because the origin story of this phrase is actually pick back or pick pack but it was so commonly misstated as piggyback that that mispronunciation which mispronunciation was adopted and now it means piggyback and pigs are like what the hell are you talking about and there are lots more like this because we're up against lunch I won't bore you with an origin story it's a true one it's horrible about the BS phrase blowing smoke up your ass for example but I won't go there here's the takeaway out of all of this is that BS terms can get lost in translation and I want you to think of some of your own cultural BS that we use around the world for example in America if a company is without money you might say it's broke in Italy you would say it's in the green in Spain you would say it's without white right in America if you're doing a very easy task you might say it was a piece of cake in New Zealand you say Bob's your uncle right if you have a very hard task that will never happen in America you would probably say oh it'll happen when pigs fly in the Netherlands a Dutch worker would say when the Cavs dance on the ice and in Russia they would say when a crayfish whistles from The Mountaintop means the same thing in Japan if you were doing a work task and you need help you're desperate for anybody you may say I'll adopt cat paws in America if you were given a task that is one day over a long-term project and man you're just getting started you may say that it's a drop in the bucket in China they have the same idea communicated through the phrase of nine cows and only one cow thread so those are examples of cultural differences with BS and I'd be remiss to leave you for lunch without calling out some of the the regional fondness for food in your BS in the German language think of yourself when you're in a business meeting in Germany or in Austria with the German language if you want to add your two cents in America you'd say two cents here you say I want to add my mustard okay and once you get that mustard you want to be as clear as dumpling broth about what you're trying to say right you certainly don't want to come across as somebody has tomatoes on their eyes you know and the last thing you want to do in that scenario is you don't want to talk around the hot porch okay which the equivalent of beating around the bush with American BS I've given you a lot of over a short amount of time so I'm going to wrap it up with a little BS language and we'll recap here in BS what I am trying to say is disambiguate the net net of this dog and pony show for you thought leaders and I'm going to call out the elephant in the room with the three takeaways here first takeaway use BS to be inclusive not exclusive second takeaway is to make sure that you express fresh ideas without stale business cliches or big words that maybe your audience doesn't really understand and then finally appreciate that a lot of our BS is Lost in Translation depending on the audience if we can all do this starting at lunchtime think of how little less there would be in the world and what a wonderful thing that would be thank you very much