Articles - Subscribe to our monthly Editorial by

In the wash-up of last Saturday’s Federal election and the resulting hung Parliament, we dissect the performance of both leaders pre and post election – Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Liberal Party’s Tony Abbott.

To be engaged is to be greatly interested, occupied and involved. As an employee to be engaged is therefore to be greatly interested, occupied and involved in your work or employer. It is a function that, by definition, most companies want their employees to be. Sadly, it is increasingly the one thing our employees are not.

In every field of endeavour I have always heard about the “top two inches” being the difference between success and failure. More than physical ability, skills, knowledge or aptitude it is the brain and how it works under pressure that ultimately makes the difference between champion and also-ran. The question I always had is what is happening in the “top two inches”?

This is an absolute non-negotiable. Everyone’s writing needs to be different from everyone else’s. And the only way that happens is if writers make different choices when they write, choices about the topics they pick, the words they use, the details they include, different beginning and ending strategies, and so on. The set of all the different choices a writer makes determines what is often called the “voice” in a piece of writing.

That’s right… 4 words. In fact, 2 words each. Tony Abbott wants Australia to stand up and Julia Gillard wants Australia to move forward. As always it’s not the number of words that are the problem. After all there have been some very effective slogans using very few words. Nike’s “Just Do It” is a fine example of a short, pithy slogan that seems to embody so much more than the sum of its parts. In those three words there is an implied boldness, a sense of urgency and a determination to get the job done.

It is fair to say that Kevin Rudd’s communication and leadership style is not exactly unique. In fact, it is arguable that his combination of undoubted ability and talent together with a complete inability to express himself effectively is the most common leadership and communication style seen in the modern world.

Many of the commonly accepted ideas about right- brain and left-brain differences are nothing more than pop psychology and they most certainly do not represent well-documented science.

The best-supported distinctions about right and left hemisphere specialization are about 95% of right-handed people have language in the left hemisphere.

Everyone does it – offer 3 options starting with the least desirable and finishing up with the most desirable. If you are like most people you believe in showing the cheapest option first when discussing things with a potential customer. The problem is that is the wrong way to do it and smart organizations already know this.

In the March Editorial we devote an entire edition to one subject that people feel compelled to ask me about all the time – the sticky issue of PowerPoint. There is probably no single presentation tool that sparks more controversy than the ubiquitous Microsoft PowerPoint.

Why does anyone feel compelled to write such lengthy dribble and in doing so seem hell bent on confusing and agitating the poor people who have to read it? I suspect the answer is because most people have in their heads a certain way they are supposed to sound when communicating

How can my personal experience of one of Rod’s flagship hospitals be so completely different to what Rod and his board both espouse and completely believe? Is my experience (twice in a row) completely out of the ordinary or are Rod and his board completely misinformed?

“How many of you have had one of those wonderful, large breakfast muffins from a great bakery? (Brett smiles and nods taking out a wonderful bakery-quality muffin and holding it up high as a demo.) And how many of you have made muffins in your own home, but no matter what you do they never turn out as great as that wonderful muffin from that great bakery?

For those of you wondering how this turned out the saga continues – a very funny and remarkably similar story from one of our loyal readers. Fear not BMW… it only comes from one of Australia’s most high profile and respected CEO’s – nothing to concern yourselves with

I currently own a BMW and recently had one of those annoying lights come on telling me I had an engine fault and a subsequent loss of engine power. It was an intermittent fault but one that had to be addressed because while one can put up with an “engine fault” a “loss of engine power” is very serious business indeed.

Heads up people – there is no such thing as ‘body language’ and every body language book you have ever read is wrong! Whether you are referring to gestures, movements, breathing, posture or anything else to do with expressions of the body I can assure you it is not a “language”.

I continue to be astounded by the unbelievable stupidity of corporate communication. It is almost as if people do this stuff just so I have something to write about

This month we turn our acerbic communication diatribe to a brief examination of the concept of company policy and ask ‘why? ‘ because it appears that no one else is!

The U.S. standard railroad gauge is four feet, eight and one-half inches. That is an unusual sort of number to come up with and you might be wondering how it happened.

In 2002 management guru Tom Peters’ company conducted a survey of 1104 business professionals and found that 86% of their executives felt that they were great communicators. Interestingly, only 17% of their direct reports felt that those same executives were effective communicators. This is not exactly a new finding.

You have probably had ‘out of work actors’ at presentation skills courses tell you that the content of a message is composed of:

* 55% from the visual component
* 38% from the auditory component
* 7% from language

Bollocks!!!! The above percentages have been taken out of context and here is why.

[read more]

March 2009

Why Mobile Telco’s Hate Their Customers

Did I say hate? I’m sorry; I didn’t mean ‘hate’. To hate your customers you would actually have to give a toss in the first place wouldn’t you? No… I meant they don’t care. Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, Telecom and 3 have pretty much zero interest in their own customers. How do we know that? Because they go to great pains to tell us – constantly.

[read more]

February 2009

A Communication Reality Check

The traditional approach to developing a mastery of communication in business is to focus on technique and skill. It is an approach that probably describes 90% of the communication courses that you may have attended and it is an approach that is doomed to failure for 90% of people. Why?

[read more]