An analysis of why people bullshit and what you can do about it. A taster for The Dictionary of Business Bullshit and asking Kevin to speak on the subject.

1. BANISHING THE BULL
Kevin Duncan

2. WHY DO PEOPLE
USE BULLSHIT?

3. Bullshit…
• Is now ubiquitous

4. Bullshit…
• Is now ubiquitous
“The realms of advertising and of public
relations, and the nowadays closely related
realm of politics, are replete with instances of
bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve
among the most indisputable and classic
paradigms of the concept.”
Professor Harry G. Frankfurt,
Princeton University

5. Bullshit…
• Is more insidious than you might think

6. Bullshit…
• Is more insidious than you might think
Bullshit:
1. The excreta of a large male bovine.
2. Technically endless supply of waffle and nonsense
uttered in business meetings; cunning
wordsmithery that is neither on the side of the false
nor the truth; verbal expedience; the entire contents
of this book. (see Bollocks, talking; Doughnut rather
than the hole, it would be wise to concentrate on
the; Obfuscation; Off the top of my head; Static;
Talking out loud; Waffle; White noise; Word dump)

7. Bullshit…
• Has not attracted much sustained inquiry
because we think we know how to spot it

8. Bullshit…
• Has not attracted much sustained inquiry
because we think we know how to spot it
Going forward:
1. The opposite of backwards.
2. Truly a king amongst kings; the undisputed
champion of utter bullshit, with the possible
exception of “proactive”; entirely pointless modifier
somehow designed to suggest a forward-looking
demeanour, when any fool knows that a backward
one would be detrimental for everybody, except
possibly historians who should indeed adopt a
backward-looking approach; selfish waste of time
perpetrated by anyone using these two utterly
redundant words. (see -focused; Forward-looking;
Future-facing; Futureproof; Goal-oriented; Here-and-
now-ness; Momentum; Proactive)

9. Bullshit…
• Is not easy to define because the term is
often used loosely and as a generic term of
abuse

10. Bullshit…
• Is not easy to define because the term is
often used loosely and as a generic term of
abuse
Bollocks, talking:
1. Testicles that can speak.
2. Sustained burst of total rubbish blurted out in
answer to an unexpected interview question;
patchwork of platitude and cliché designed to
confuse; mission statement contents; any
acceptance speech; 100% of proclamations
made by politicians or sportsmen. (see
Bullshit; Obfuscation)

11. Bullshit…
• Covers a multitude of sins

12. Bullshit…
• Covers a multitude of sins
Knowledge management, transfer:
1. Control, or handing over of, wisdom.
2. Catastrophic inability to control or hand over any
wisdom at all; brain drain; complete loss of
expertise when one intelligent person leaves the
company; collapse of all IT functions when Dave
leaves; haphazard filing system that passes on no
knowledge whatsoever. (see Know-how; Talent,
war on)

13. Bullshit…
• Is similar to shoddy goods – produced in a
careless or self-indulgent manner, and never
finely crafted

14. Bullshit…
• Is similar to shoddy goods – produced in a
careless or self-indulgent manner, and never
finely crafted
Bottom feeding:
1. Eating material on the floor of a river, sea or fish
tank.
2. Hoovering up any crap that has settled on the
bottom; dealing solely in the dross; working with or
for the cheapest and worst possible exponents in
the market; actively pursuing low-rent customers,
and to hell with the consequences. (see Ambulance
chasing; Scraping the barrel)

15. Bullshit…
• Is a lack of concern with the truth and an
indifference to how things really are

16. Bullshit…
• Is a lack of concern with the truth and an
indifference to how things really are
Off the top of my head:
1. Something has just fallen from my cranium, such
as a hat, or my wig.
2. I haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, so I’ll just
spout any twaddle I can think of and hope that
nobody notices because they are all doing the
same thing. (see Bullshit; Talking out loud; Waffle;
Word dump)

17. Bullshit…
• Involves a kind of bluff

18. Bullshit…
• Involves a kind of bluff
Obfuscation:
1. Deliberately making something obscure or
difficult to understand.
2. An egregious lie or cover-up; frantic fudging of the
truth to disguise incompetence or outright crime.
(see Access to information; Bollocks, talking;
Broad brush; Bullshit; Keep it dark; Hedge our
bets; Mum, keep; Off the top of my head;
Prevaricate; Talking out loud; Techno-babble;
Waffle; Word dump)

19. Bullshit…
• Is stimulated whenever a person’s
obligations or opportunities to speak about
some topic exceed their knowledge of the
facts that are relevant to the topic

20. Bullshit…
• Is stimulated whenever a person’s
obligations or opportunities to speak about
some topic exceed their knowledge of the
facts that are relevant to the topic
Bandwidth, he doesn’t have the:
1. Not intelligent.
2. He’s thick as a brick; dead from the neck up;
relentlessly useless at work; no help at all, in fact, a
downright hindrance; 100% incompetent. (see
Intelligent, if you were any less ______, I’d have to
water you once a day; Mental furniture; Obvious, firm
grasp of the; Psychic RAM; Shilling, not the full;
WOMBAT)

21. Bullshit…
• Can involve:
o deceptive misrepresentation
o just short of lying, especially by pretentious word or
deed
o misrepresentation of somebody’s own thoughts,
feelings or attitudes

22. Bullshit…
• Can involve:
o deceptive misrepresentation
o just short of lying, especially by pretentious word or
deed
o misrepresentation of somebody’s own thoughts,
feelings or attitudes
Jazz Hands:
1. All style and no content.
2. Soup this presentation up immediately because it
is essentially content-free (see Zee, we’ve
covered everything from A to; Full Monty, the;
Turd, polishing a; Wow factor)

23. THE BULLSHITTER

24. The bullshitter
• Is not necessarily a liar

25. The bullshitter
• Is not necessarily a liar
Facts, cold hard:
1. The untainted truth.
2. What’s left after all the bullshit has been stripped
away; most commonly exposed as nothing of
substance at all.

26. The bullshitter
• Is phony rather than false

27. The bullshitter
• Is phony rather than false
Crafting, it needs a bit of:
1. Further work is required on this.
2. This is sub-standard rubbish and needs to be
done again. (see Bugs, iron out the; Drawing
board, back to the; Optimal; Sub-optimal; Tools,
management, unique; Woodwork, spanners in
the, spanners jumping out of the)

28. The bullshitter
• Is faking things, but this does not mean that
they necessarily get them wrong

29. The bullshitter
• Is faking things, but this does not mean that
they necessarily get them wrong
Putting lipstick on a pig:
1. Applying cosmetics to a porcine beast, presumably
to make it look better.
2. Frantically try to make something appear better
than it is, usually to no avail; futile cover up effort.
(see GIGO; Jazz hands; Rebrand; RIRO; SISO; Turd,
polishing a)

30. The bullshitter
• Has much more freedom than someone
who tells the truth or lies, because they do
not require an anchor point on one side or
the other

31. The bullshitter
• Has much more freedom than someone
who tells the truth or lies, because they do
not require an anchor point on one side or
the other
Broad brush:
1. Wide painting utensil for covering a wide area.
2. Total fudge; failure to come to point; obfuscation;
vagueness; sweeping attempt to avoid coming to
the point. (see Gloss over; Keep it dark; Strategy)

32. The bullshitter
• Intends neither to report the truth nor to
conceal it

33. The bullshitter
• Intends neither to report the truth nor to
conceal it
Come up to scratch:
1. Reach the required level.
2. Exasperated exhortation to reach the required
level, for once in your life; desperate plea from
boss to ineffective and feckless subordinate; set
low standards for oneself and consistently fail to
meet them; underachieve.

34. The bullshitter
• Is neither on the side of the truth nor on the
side of the false

35. The bullshitter
• Is neither on the side of the truth nor on the
side of the false
Competitive advantage, edge:
1. Something compelling that makes us better than
our competitors.
2. Sinking feeling based on the dawning realization
that we are clearly no better than our competitors;
on further examination, alarming discovery that we
are actually much worse than our competitors;
trumped up piece of corporate puffery to claim
competitive advantage where there patently is
none. (see Leverage)

36. The bullshitter
• Does not care whether they describe reality
correctly

37. The bullshitter
• Does not care whether they describe reality
correctly
Reality check:
1. Occasion to consider a matter realistically or
honestly.
2. Moment that seldom occurs in business due to too
much haste or downright stupidity; sometimes used
in pseudo-rigorous way by glib managers, as in “I’m
broadly in agreement, but I think we need to take a
reality check here, Sebastian”, and often
accompanied by a broad sweep of the hand or a
thoughtful tug of the beard.

38. The bullshitter
• Just picks out material, or makes it up, to
suit their purpose

39. The bullshitter
• Just picks out material, or makes it up, to
suit their purpose
Massage the numbers:
1. Rearrange finances or statistics to create a different
conclusion.
2. Deceptive, often downright illegal, alteration of
financial reporting information in order to generate
an entirely different outcome, usually favourable;
slight of hand; legerdemain; malfeasance;
contemptible twisting of reporting line to create a
better picture, often resulting in company closure or
personal imprisonment. (see Bottom line; Cook the
books; Crunch the numbers; Fiscal juggling;
Negative growth, profit; Obfuscation; Smoke and
mirrors job)

40. The bullshitter
• Does not reject the authority of truth, as the
liar does, or oppose it – they pay no
attention to it at all

41. The bullshitter
• Does not reject the authority of truth, as the
liar does, or oppose it – they pay no
attention to it at all
Authenticity:
1. Relating to anything that is authentic.
2. Totally false, such as “This product was
lovingly forged in the crucible of time”; quality
constantly demanded of staff in over-earnest
companies. (see Passion, passionate;
Provenance; Rebrand)

42. WHAT TO DO?

43. What to do?
• Bullshit needs to be taken seriously

44. What to do?
• Bullshit needs to be taken seriously
Alarm bells, set the ______ ringing:
1. Trigger warning system because there is a fire.
2. Cause total panic amongst colleagues by doing
something distinctly unnerving, such as wearing
trainers with suits, reaching inside a room from the
corridor when a meeting is in session and turning the
light switch repeatedly on and off for five minutes, or
insisting on being called Colin when your real name is
Samantha. (see AWOL, go; Ballistic, go; Box of frogs,
mad as a; Bundle, one stick short of a; Gene pool,
swimming in the shallow end of the; Mid-life crisis;
Moon, barking at the, over the, through the; Picnic,
one sandwich short of a; Plot, lose the; Pram, to
throw one’s toys out of the; Radar, off; Rails, gone off
the)

45. What to do?
• Should you be genuinely duped by it, things
could get awkward

46. What to do?
• Should you be genuinely duped by it, things
could get awkward
Nailing a jelly to the wall, trying to:
1. Attempting an impossible task.
2. Using jelly to do something for which it was not
intended; trying to use tools that will never do the
job, however insane the job is; hammering away
with an inappropriate approach, too dim to realize
that pausing for reflection could be more
productive. (see Banana, stabbing a seal with a;
Grasping at fog)

47. What to do?
• It pays to be on the lookout for it

48. What to do?
• It pays to be on the lookout for it
Ear to the ground:
1. Well informed.
2. Phenomenally nosey.

49. What to do?
• Analyse the different types and the frequent
perpetrators of it

50. What to do?
• Analyse the different types and the frequent
perpetrators of it
SISO:
1. Shit In Shit Out.
2. Wise and eternally verified notion that if you put
poor data or other effort into something, the result
will be just as bad as the crap it always was. (see
GIGO; Putting lipstick on a pig; RIRO; Turd,
polishing a)

51. What to do?
• React appropriately

52. What to do?
• React appropriately
Risk-averse:
1. Not prone to taking any chances.
2. Inherently conservative; weak-willed;
unadventurous; lily-livered; scared; not likely to do
anything that might cause any trouble; ineffective;
possibly not worth having around; a bit useless;
not helping much; preferring to stay at one’s desk
rather than get up and do something. (see
Jobsworth)

53. What to do?
• Don’t act on falsehoods

54. What to do?
• Don’t act on falsehoods
60:50 relationship, this is the perfect:
1. This relationship is imbalanced.
2. Superbly exasperated expression of being set
upon in a lopsided partnership that is
supposed to be equal. (see Partners)

55. BANISH THE BULL
Kevin Duncan
www.bulldictionary.com
Twitter: @kevinduncan
07979 808770