When I was 18, the IRA hid a bomb outside Belfast Castle, where my sister was celebrating her wedding. It was nothing personal – the security forces had been tipped off, so the bombers had to dump their device before...
What fish can teach us about setting up effective meetings What’s communication like during a typical meeting? Our normal model is very linear – a whole series of these: This linear pattern derives from Claude Shannon...
I came across this question on Quora: “What are some drawbacks of visual thinking?” “Drawbacks”? It got me thinking… Dave Gray answered the question directly and objectively, emphasising the need to match the right tool...
So here’s another popular TED Talk (I don’t know why TED Talks so often start with “so”). The gist of it is that effective communication, especially storytelling, syncs our brains. So when you...
How to create intuitive categories: Ask “What does this look like, and where are the edges?” Last week I described how abstract content is easier to understand when it is divided into chunks that are “clear...
Fuzzy edges impede shared meaning Last week I talked about how numbering related concepts makes them feel more real than just listing them. When you hear about a list of “four elements of strategy”, or “four domains of...
Something I’ve noticed from interviewing leaders is the number of times they use numbers in their answers. “There are four things you need to understand about that.” “I’ll give you two – no wait – three, examples.” ...
Two weeks ago I drew out some general principles from the work of Tim Urban. Some of Tim’s most popular (and scariest) posts deal with the subject of mortality and the preciousness of time. They’re not just popular –...
I gave a talk at the IRM Innovation and Business Transformation conference last week with the title “Getting the ducks on the same hymnsheet: How shared language enables transformation”. The response was...
The underlying principle of most of the things I write (last week was a good example) is how shared meaning is created by connecting with shared experience, and I’m always on the lookout for examples of where this is...
