As part of his Awesome Presenting 50 series, Nicholas Bate reminds us: More stories. Definitely more stories. Stories are memorable: they have links, flow, drama. They are easy to remember. Bullets are forgettable.   Remember! Read the rest, here.   Photo by Mark Rasmuson on Unsplash

Five tips for good writing, grounded in the works of Charles Bukowski: Write with emotion Write with brevity Write with clarity Write with honesty Write with style Read the full post, here.   Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Eric Liu discusses the nature of power and how stories can change the status quo, on Ideas.TED.com. This is true far beyond the context of civic power in which Liu writes. “When you want to challenge the powerful, you must change the story.” He outlines three nested stories we must tell; The Story of Self […]

The Times has a profile of SciFutures, a firm that creates sci-fi short stories to help businesses and other organisations envision the future and develop strategies in response. It’s a great concept and one already taken up by firms like Visa, Ford, Pepsi and Samsung, along with NATO and the US Navy. We are all […]

Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow is essential reading for anyone involved in business communication. It is packed with insights on how we (and therefore our audience) perceive and interpret things. One particular challenge is described in chapter 13: “Linda: Less is More”. The challenge is epitomised by a fictitious character, Linda, that Kahneman […]

Great point from Seth Godin, here. Facts and proof-points are essential. They give credibility to your case, they anchor it in reality. But, they are just the anchor; they are not the graceful yacht slicing through the waves.   Photo by Alin Meceanu on Unsplash

Stories are told in the body, says Jeremy Smith: It doesn’t seem that way. We tend to think of stories as emerging from consciousness—from dreams or fantasies—and travelling through words or images to other minds. We see them outside of us, on paper or on screen, never under the skin. But we do feel stories. […]

Seth Godin is on a roll about writing… “People rarely read to the end. And they almost never spend as much time reading your words as you spend writing them. Which makes it ironic that the little phrases we use (in designing a simple form, or when we answer the phone) matter so much.” Read […]

“It is reason and wisdom which take away cares, not places affording wide views over the sea.” Horace (65BC – 8BC), Epistles I, xi,25-6

Another from Seth Godin: “Science is a process. It’s not pretending it has the right answer, it merely has the best process to get closer to that right answer. Science is an ongoing argument, one where you show your work and make a prediction about what’s going to happen next.” We desperately need more science, […]