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Posted by: Rob Ashton
27 / 11 / 24
I faced a slightly awkward moment in a meeting recently. Some consultants were presenting their ideas to me, but I stopped them five seconds into their first slide. It was incredibly complex, and I really wanted to understand it. The trouble was that my mind kept being drawn to the separate, verbal commentary their leader […]
12 / 11 / 24
A colleague had a bizarre experience recently. While browsing the website of a well-known electrical-goods company, she idly clicked the Get Help button. But instead of taking her to an FAQ page or opening a live chat as she’d expected, to her horror, the button started a live video call. Suddenly, she found herself facing […]
11 / 11 / 24
Some rules are made to be broken – even ones that I laid down just a few weeks ago. You know how I said recently that it’s usually best to put your main points first? Well, there are some times when that’s not such a good idea. Obviously it’s still true that few of us […]
05 / 11 / 24
How much do big words and flowery phrases really impress our peers? A lot less than many people think, it seems. I’ve talked before about the strange, alternative language that we adopt whenever we sit down to write a document. I call this language Documentese, and it’s full of long or complex words and phrases […]
23 / 10 / 24
Have you ever wondered why you can never seem to get a document written until its deadline is looming? You might have been paralysed by writer’s block for weeks. Yet when you realise it’s due in at 5 o’clock today, you’re miraculously able to get on with it. It’s as if you’ve found a secret […]
22 / 10 / 24
I confess that I can be a little paranoid at times. And never more so than when I’m sending important emails. It usually goes something like this. After agonising over the message itself, often rewriting it several times, I hit send and the clock starts ticking. If I’ve done my job properly, I’ll usually be […]
10 / 10 / 24
A client contacted us recently while still recovering from a mild trauma. He was the head of risk at an investment bank and had just finished reading a report on a major incident in the lending team. The report had rightly flagged the problem in the first two sentences, grabbing his attention in an instant. […]
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