Manure Madness
The Road to the Final Foul

Round 2: Empty Calories

Annual reports, or so we are led to believe, provide that once-a-year opportunity for companies to tell their owners something important about the companies they own. It’s a chance to say something about their plans for the future and how they plan to compete and outperform their competitors. (Yeah, right.)

In this round, Corporate titans will compete to see who can do the best to drown their shareholders in a heaping helping of fluff. Letters to shareholders will be evaluated to see what percentage of total words say absolutely, positively nothing. In addition, the points will be awarded to those companies who do a particularly creative job of showcasing a complete and total lack of strategy. Real business idiots have figured out that when they don’t have a real strategy, they can just string together a bunch of empty nonsense and make one up. In this round, we see who does the best job of using a lot of words to say nothing at all.


Scoring Specifics


Each paragraph in the annual report will be evaluated against the following criteria:

• Something important is said about the company’s past results or future plans
• An interesting or important point of view is taken (hint: “the improving economy will help us” does not qualify)
• An important fact is revealed (hint: “people are our most important asset” does not qualify)

If a paragraph says essentially nothing, all words in that paragraph will be counted as empty calories. The total percentage of empty calorie words to total words will be computed.

In addition to the empty calorie count, each letter will be evaluated to determine if any substantive strategies are presented. Say nothing strategies like “increase our global presence” or “continue to focus on sustainability” count for more empty calories. This form of Strategery is scored as follows:

Empty CaloriesCriteria
0Clear distinctive strategies described; with no qualifiers
5Clear strategies, but some are qualified with caveats and contingencies
10Strategies are fuzzy, undifferentiating, or way too obvious. They clearly do not inspire confidence in the future prospects of the company
20Absolutely no tangible strategies described; statements could be lifted from this company and equally applied to any company




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