John Rentoul of The Independent was on Radio 4 the other day, celebrating the third birthday of his directory of clichés. For three summers, he’s been railing against big asks, moments in time, elephants in the room and game changers. He’s built his own online hall of shame. His campaign against the cliché has stuck [...]

I heard something the other day that I hadn’t heard for a long time. Silence. With a moment to spare in central London I strayed into my old college, the London School of Economics and its Shaw Library. Named after George Bernard. Picture a deliberately old style library like you might find in a country [...]

I spend a lot of time delivering unlearning. I help organisations and their people to write more clearly and effectively. In another life, I’ve worked with radio producers and their leaders helping them produce better performance. So my professional life is all about helping people learn new skills. Or is it? It’s begun to dawn [...]

“Because people are busier than ever, a précis is a modern form of good manners”. He was talking about the virtues of being concise. It made me stop and think because of my own interest in helping organisations write and speak more clearly. But ‘good manners’? It seems like a slightly old fashioned phrase now. [...]

Quite a bit, you realise, when you step inside the National Portrait Gallery. The entrance, just behind Trafalgar Square, is on a well worn path to and from West End offices and Whitehall corridors. I’d walked past many times until I promised myself I’d go inside once in a while and get uplifted. And here [...]

Steve Radcliffe says: Hi, we have a new contributor this week. Chris was a client at the BBC, loves FED and just wanted to write a volcano-influenced piece for the site. And please feel free to join in with either a comment on an article, or write an article yourself. If you’d like to write [...]