Software sets about corporate 'bull'

The days of management double-speak – of boardroom pledges to provide "repurposeable, value added knowledge capital", and corporate reports offering "robust, leveragable mindshare solutions delivery" – could be numbered.

Deloitte Consulting has produced Bullfighter, a free to download software programme that 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", according to the company, which clearly avoids the temptation to qualitatively evangelise the envisioneering capacity and the strategic potentiality of the new software.

Brian Fugere, partner at Deloitte Consulting, said that companies need to restore public trust, by speaking and writing more clearly – and Bullfighter has been designed to do just that.

"Less empty rhetoric about openness, honesty and accountability, and more straight talk,” he commented in a manner dissimilar to the forward-looking, value added knowledge capital mindshare statements of the past.

Deloitte used Bullfighter 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".

Deloitte's conclusion - that straightforward communications can be linked to financial performance - mirrors the findings of two accounting and finance professors, Malcolm Smith of the University of South Australia and Richard Taffler of Cranfield University. Their independent study concluded that clarity of communications could be a very good indicator of corporate performance.

“We're hoping Bullfighter will shatter the credibility of business jargon, and make business communications safer for all of us,” said Mr Fugere.

“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.”

(GMcG)