Over 2.5 hours into my rail replacement bus trip out of Cornwall & the driver admits to a passenger that ‘we’re going the wrong way’. Which wasn’t the news I was hoping to hear. Sure enough, a quick look on google maps and we’re heading West! 15 mins later no 3 point turn yet…
Still going. When asked about our train connection, the driver says there’s nothing he can do. Hold on - a roundabout!
1/ THREAD (about emails, no less). I confess, I’m a keen student of email. It's a big part of how many of us communicate when working - and how we write emails has a huge bearing on if they get read, understood and acted on. These are my 5 assumptions when I start to write one.
Assumption 1: The email or message may not be read at all.
We're going to have to convince the recipient the email is worth opening and reading. Given some email apps only show the first line or two, very early on we need to explicitly state what the message is about.
Assumption 2: They may not read all of it.
Two things can help here. The shorter the message, the more likely people are to read all of it and respond. And we can start with the most important information and requests, in case the reader doesn’t make it to the end.
THREAD...on the 10 attributes that I am looking for in an explanation. And the 10 questions that help me try to deliver them each time that I’m communicating.
1. Simplicity.
Is this the simplest way that I can say this?
If what we say is in its simplest form, it's going to be easier to take in.
2. Essential detail.
What detail is essential to this explanation?
Every excess piece information that we include is asking more of the person that we're communicating with.
1/8 for teachers to accompany a new explainer on voter ID - and how, from the local elections in England in May, voters will need to show photo ID. First, here's the video.
2/8 Part of the video looks at research into what kinds of photo ID people across society have. The research was commissioned by the government and you can see it here. gov.uk/government/pub…
3/8 The BBC has run a number of useful reports on this subject. This one looks at what photo ID can be used. bbc.co.uk/news/explainer…
1/5 Quick thread for teachers. A couple of weeks ago I posted the thread below about what more we could to make our explainers helpful and accessible to teachers, parents, pupils and students. We were thrilled to see all the suggestions and we've done a few things in response.
2/5 First, you can now find all our explainer videos that appear on the @BBCNews website in one place - this page. We’re also looking to get a snappier URL and adding our archive too. Any that aren't on the website, I’ll post here or on YouTube. bbc.com/news/topics/cl…
3/5 Also, each time I post a video, I’ll do a thread here for teachers and students which will include links to some of the sources we used. That way students can see some of what we worked with and gain extra information too. (I’m about to do this on voter ID.)
1/10 Wages are struggling to keep up with costs. Covid and Ukraine are factors but to explain what’s happening, we also need to look further back – to Britain’s levels of wage growth, productivity, investment and inequality. This is what we found. First - wage growth has stalled
2/10 According to Torsten Bell at the Resolution Foundation, a think tank focused on low-to middle incomes, this "stagnation" is "almost completely unprecedented. Nobody thought it could happen".
3/10 Next - if you want wages to rise, productivity is crucial. As economist Mohamed El-Erian puts it: "the more you produce, the more you get rewarded for it". But as you can see here, UK productivity is growing more slowly than the average across developed countries.