Moose on the Table
Over the last couple of years I’ve become very familiar with the concept of eating your frog/toad in a time management kind of way, and have been coming to terms with eating elephants (a bite at a time if you’re dealing with project management). Now, in the words of the woman on my yoga video, “we’ve got another animal on our hands”. This time it’s a moose, but thankfully we don’t have to eat it. Any other animals we need in a business context?
Moose on the Table by Jim Clemmer has the subtitle ‘A Novel Approach to Communications @ Work’. I didn’t realise until I started reading it that that is exactly what it is – a novel. What a fun way to approach a serious subject! It’s the story of how Pete sorts out a frighteningly bad leadership problem to turn the company he works for around. It’s a nice, easy read with a lot to take away and apply to your own situation. I certainly know a lot more about leadership (and moose) than I did before.
To be honest, if I had sat down to read this as a novel rather than a business book then I may have come away a bit disappointed. As far as a work of fiction goes it’s probably not the best bit of writing I’ve ever read. But that’s not the point is it? As a refreshingly different approach to providing advice on leadership and communications this is a huge success. It certainly ticks all the boxes of being easy to read and conveying the information in an easy to absorb way.
If you’re interested in learning more about good (and bad) leadership or have an in-house issue you need to tackle this would be a good place to start.
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The Right Way to Write
The thing that has stayed with me since finishing it is the importance of writing as clearly as possible. Don’t use big words for the sake of it or make your sentences too complicated – otherwise you may come across as pompous (got a feeling I may have been guilty of that at times) and the intended audience may have trouble understanding what you mean. Keep it simple and clear so you won’t be misunderstood. However, what I do need to be careful about is not being so direct that I come across as abrupt – I think in some cases writing does need ‘fluffing up’ up bit to ensure that you get the right tone.
Overall definitely worth a read. It gets you thinking about your writing style and some of the habits you may have got into, and can be used as a practical guide to every-day business writing.
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Flurry of emails
Communication by email can be a funny thing sometimes. We send emails off to our clients asking for feedback on a project and after a couple of days we start wondering if they are going to respond. We like to involve our clients throughout the whole web design process and value their input, but it can sometimes be a struggle.
However, today we had a flurry of emails. It was quite astonishing. It seemed that all the replies we had been waiting for came in at once. All positive stuff as well. Of course that means more work for us as we have to follow up on the comments but great to keep the momentum going on our current projects.
