December 2010

Welcome to the festive edition of The Editorial!

Bollinger opened, Johnson out, Hussey bowled over… no it’s not a cricket commentary it’s a first hand account of Shane Warne’s Christmas Eve with Liz Hurley. Welcome to the festive edition of The Editorial! This month, as befits the season, we take a lighter look at some little known Christmas facts.

November 2010

Why large and very successful companies continue to spend huge sums of money on incredibly inane communications?

This month The Editorial examines one such example from none other than Starwood Hotels and Resorts. Their brands are well known and include Sheraton, Westin, Four Points by Sheraton and Le Meridian among others. I recently stayed at the Sheraton Noosa Resort located very conveniently in Noosa on the Sunshine Coast in Australia where I was speaking at a conference for Infocus Money Management.

October 2010

Facts we know about learning that are not based on convention but instead are scientifically proven

This month The Editorial presents (in summary, courtesy of Donald Clark who is much smarter than me) some facts we know about learning that are not based on convention but instead are scientifically proven. Unfortunately, while we know these things to be true they are hardly ever reflected in our communications – and almost always absent from all of our attempts at training and education.

September 2010

Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?

Welcome back to the Editorial for the month of September. Now the election dust has settled and we are back in countdown for the next one it’s time to return to the more mundane aspects of business communication. This month a combination of a large brickbat and an even larger bouquet; the brickbat for the ongoing inability of organizations to effectively articulate their strategy and the bouquet for a very simple and blindingly effective piece of communication from the good people at Zoos Victoria.

August 2010

You know it’s me ‘cause I signed my name

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.

July 2010

Standing Up and Moving Forward

It’s election time in Australia as the nation desperately tries to decide which particular group of idiots it would like as its Government for the next three years. Although supposedly a Westminster system of Government increasingly, when it comes to electioneering, we adopt a Presidential style of campaigning focusing almost exclusively on the leaders of the respective parties. By parties, of course, I mean the two main political parties because Presidential campaigns are far too complicated if we start including the Greens or anyone else who might distract us from Julia versus Tony.

June 2010

The Death of a Prime Minister

It is an emotional time in Australia as we welcome Julia Gillard as the nations first female Prime Minister – unopposed and unelected (who says democracy is dead?) – and mourn or celebrate (depending on your political persuasion) the political death of the former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

May 2010

Left Brain versus Right Brain – for half-brained people

Welcome back to The Editorial loyal readers and prepare yourselves for what is to come. It’s myth busting time again as we take on the treasured ideas and psychobabble of the so-called communication experts and expose them for what they really are… complete nonsense. Previous editions of The Editorial have destroyed such myths as non-verbal communication and body language but this month I find myself moved to take on much bigger prey.

April 2010

Good, Better, Best or should it be the other way around?

A huge response to last months Editorial ‘The Definitive Guide to PowerPoint’ with many of you commenting on how useful you found it and how you all wished PowerPoint would just die an ugly and painful death. Frankly, I agree with most of you that there are very few places where PowerPoint is of any use at all but such is the business world’s devotion to it that I can’t see it disappearing anytime soon. Many of the executives I work with are addicted to it and can’t conceive of life without it.

March 2010

PowerPoint… the definitive guide

A bit of a departure this month for The Editorial as 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. It has detractors and proponents in pretty much equal measure and, regardless of whether or not you like it, is used with slavish devotion by the business community.

February 2010

Lion Nathan… we have a problem

The Editorial, this month, finds itself once again getting a bit tetchy! I was chatting with Leo D’Angelo Fisher from the business publication “BRW” about a number of communication issues when conversation turned to an old bugbear for both of us – management speak. Management speak is the turgid, ridiculous language used by senior executives to turn simple concepts in to completely unintelligible nonsense. For some organizations it almost seems compulsory.

January 2010

Babies, Hospitals and Boards of Directors

Welcome back to the Editorial for a brand new year! I hope that you have had a good and restful holiday and are now looking forward to returning to the drudgery that makes up a typical 9 to 5 day. I, personally, find myself yearning for it as we were fortunate enough to have a healthy baby boy arrive on the 31st of December and his 9 to 5 day appears to be between 2:00am and 4:00am. His unreasonable screaming also appears to be much more effective than my reasoned and erudite communication approach and I am now questioning my abilities on a daily basis.