Category: Communication
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How (Not) To Change Someone’s Mind
Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. ~John Kenneth Galbraith We live in a perpetual echo chamber. We follow the people we like and agree with on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. We read the news sites that […]
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Do You Have A Jargon Problem?
We’ve experimentally demonstrated what you may have already suspected: People use jargon not just to communicate, but also to show off. Zachariah Brown, Eric Anicich, Adam Galinsky Do you have a jargon problem? Defenders of jargon say it acts as necessary professional shorthand – it conveys complicated ideas succinctly – and used well, it does. […]
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From Vertical Hierarchy To Horizontal Networks: Trust Has Gone Local
The latest Edelman Trust Barometer reveals an epidemic of mistrust and misinformation. However, beyond the headlines there are some exciting possibilities for community led innovation.
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The Problem With An Over-Reliance On Data
“Last Saturday evening fans of Little Mix who had tuned in to BBC1 to watch the latest episode of their talent show, The Search, were instead treated to a contender for the worlds shittest PowerPoint presentation.” The problem with data and how we’ve conflated data with truth. This has dangerous implications for our ability to understand, explain, and improve the things we care about.
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How To Lose Trust During Complex Times
Why are we losing trust in leaders during the pandemic? The story has become about the data and nothing else. Great stories help us to persuade people to take action. Stories about data persuade people to argue about the data.
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Why Do Bad Ideas Spread So Easily?
Bad ideas can spread much more easily than good ones. And in a world of complex problems – it’s understandable why people reach for ideas that sound like easy solutions. So it’s important to understand how bad ideas spread as you can use the same tactics to spread your good ones.
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Indifference Towards Truth: Rebuilding Trust In a Post Lockdown World
If ever there was a time for critical thinking to make a comeback it’s right about now. This post was written in week eight of the UK lockdown , 55 days in which we’ve generated more speculation, more opinion and more outright bullshit than at any other time in human history. (That statement , by […]
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Death By Zoom: Have We Failed The Mass Home Working Experiment?
One of the few positives of the pandemic lockdown was the opportunity to reset the way in which we spend our working day. This was the chance to prove that remote work actually works. As someone whose job it is to run workplace experiments I’d say six or seven weeks is a very good point […]
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The Way We Work Isn’t Working
The office, after management, is arguably the biggest inefficiency tax that organisations layer over themselves. They cost huge amounts to procure and maintain, they become an all too convenient base for meetings (another inefficiency tax), and they set a precedent for the expected hours that people are meant to work. Offices promote lengthy commuting which […]
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An A-Z of Office Jargon
Apparently – ‘Touch Base” is the most-hated office phrase for a second year in a row. Certainly – it’s a mainstay of contact requests I get from Linkedin. And if I fail to touch base I usually get someone ‘circling back’ to remind me. But surely the most in vogue phrase is ‘we’re on a […]
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Why Story Will Always Beat Statistics
Data is not fact and fact is often just a hypothesis anyway. We humans design how data is created and we humans are the ones who interpret data and draw conclusions from it. Therefore, data will always be inherently fallible – Gerry McGovern Many of our organisations attempt to illustrate the achievement of their purpose […]
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How Technology Is Changing Our Conversation
In 2013 a Communications Director named Justine Sacco landed in Cape Town after a flight from New York. As she switched her phone back on she was met with two messages. The first was from someone she hadn’t spoken to for years: “I’m so sorry to see what’s happening.” The second was from her best […]
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The Number 1 Priority For Your CEO: Building Trust
Silence is now deeply dangerous—a tax on truth – Richard Edelman Trust is the most valuable commodity in your organisation – although it’s probably not something you talk about often, much less attempt to measure. For the past 16 years, Edelman has attempted to track the progress, or decline, of trust across 28 countries. The latest […]
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An A-Z of Modern Jargon
Yesterday a colleague who had been faced with a lot of long documents filled with confusing language came out with a great phrase: I didn’t know where to start. So, I didn’t There’s some science to this. Faced with choice overload and unfamiliar phrases one of our automatic responses is to shut things down and […]
Paul Taylor 