Are we living in the era of Fluff? — an era of Fluff in a time when Fluff simply won’t cut it?

Of all the ideas in this terrific book, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt, (my selection for the October 7 First Friday Book Synopsis), this one seemed to especially grab me:

Fluff is superficial restatement of the obvious combined with a generous sprinkling of buzzwords.
and
A hallmark of true expertise and insight is making a complex subject understandable. A hallmark of mediocrity and bad strategy is unnecessary complexity — a flurry of fluff masking an absence of substance.

Fluff is the easy answer, the short answer, the simplistic answer (not simple: simple is a different matter.  Simple is good – simplistic is bad).

Fluff can come in a very small number of words, or in a lot of words.  Volume and high word count can still be the short, simplistic, “borrowed from clichés” answer.

And in this very fragile time, we need something deeper than fluff.  The book describes the demanding, serious work required to come up with good strategy.  Short cuts; borrowing from clichés; fluff, simply won’t cut it.  I hope you will join us on October 7.  This is a genuinely useful, challenging book that will help you escape from the realm of fluff.