I’m not excited about autonomous vehicles. There’s a lot been said about the benefits of the autonomous vehicles that we’ve been promised will arrive in the next few years. On-demand use, energy efficiency, less congestion, improved safety, high reliability etc etc. But I’m not so sure… The ‘reliability thing’ (never breaking down and leaving you […]
Corporate Reporting – What can we learn from Fast Food Vendors?
“A picture is worth a thousand words…, “ an idea that is universally recognised, frequently used in business, but not often seen where it might have most impact – Senior Executive/Board meetings. Descriptive text still dominates most senior level reports, often using ‘corpspeak’; a peculiar form of jargon developed by people like *The Head of […]
Winston Churchill and the ‘fight them on the beaches’ Pie Chart
A while ago I was Guest Editor for Comms2Point0. Thank you to Dan Slee and Darren Caveney for the invite. Here’s the post I wrote: Excellent News! Through extensive research* I’ve located a picture of Winston Churchill from June 1940, practicing his Powerpoint presentation of the ‘fight them on the beaches’ speech. If you squint […]
Helping without being directly helpful – Mandarin English and Sabotage
Many years ago in a galaxy far far away I ran a series of improvement workshops with a big organisation. The final session was about developing an action plan and things were going swimmingly. The group had ‘taken ownership’, identified ‘SMART outcomes’, developed ‘success criteria’ and set out a ‘monitoring and evaluation framework’. What could possibly […]
Good Enough is Good Enough, the law of diminishing returns.
Before I start this is not a rallying call for mediocrity or dumbing down. There are many people with deeply held views on ‘good enough is not good enough’. I’d prefer not to offend them. This a post prompted by frustration. Frustration at the ‘pursuit of perfection’, and how it slows down getting things done. […]
Florence Nightingale; the mother of Infographics? (btw she was also a nurse…)j
Recently I’ve had a few interesting conversations around this exchange: Question, “What did Florence Nightingale do? ” Typical response, “She was a Nurse……(of course!)“. But….. “did you know she was also a mathematician? In the 1850’s produced a remarkable graphic showing the causes of death of hospitalised soldiers during the Crimean war. The graphic convinced Parliament to […]
My epic communication fail…… The 4 Foot Post Story
This week has been about failures in communication. I’ve ended up with 16 feet of timber for fence posts, excellent. Unfortunately it wasn’t in the shape of the two 8 foot lengths I needed. I got four 4 foot lengths. It might as well have been firewood. I could put this down to a sophisticated […]
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