Harrow Council speaks plain English

Aah, jargon - where would we be without it? The news that Harrow Council has banned staff from using management-speak and insisted on the use of plain English will bring a sigh of relief from employees and the public.
During my media training courses I battle with jargon on a regular basis. One local council I provided some media training for explained that their dinner ladies were "meal operatives" while a pharmaceutical client insisted on talking about "local clinical management" - going to the doctors to you and me. I'll leave "loose stool urgency" to your imagination!
Another retail client who wanted help with handling the media and advice on doing interviews assumed that the public would understand the term "footfall" and that "delivering an enhanced customer experience" would mean something to readers of a local newspaper or listeners to the afternoon radio show. Also part of their daily language was "varied product offering" and "customer proposition." Come again? On the other hand, I don't think many customers would come in the first place!
Weaning clients off jargon and helping them to use plain language is essential if you want to handle the media effectively. It's not about dumbing down - it's just good, clear communication. Look at some of the greatest speeches in the English language - most of th e words in Churchill's fight on the beaches speech are just on syllable.
The psychologist Flesch developed a reading score relating to complexity of language. In good corporate communications the simpler the language the most trusted the company. As Enron became engulfed in its financial difficulties, the language its senior executives and company spokespeople used became more opaque and jargon-ridden, according to the Flesch score.
My pharmaceutical clients soon understand that every day language would engage their audience while, by the end of the media training course, the retailer was explaining to his audience: "When you come into our shop, you'll see a wonderful range of fresh fruit and vegetables and immediately you'll smell the fresh bread from our bakery". Painting pictures is the best way to communicate and persuade when doing interviews and in everyday life.
What will be really interesting to see is whether Harrow Council sticks to their resolution or ends up seeking stakeholder engagement by going for the low hanging fruit by opting for a meaningful dialogue at this moment in time.
Pardon?

Too much of a good thing

Alistair Darling must be ruing his relaxing weekend with the Guardian journalist Decca Aitkenhead.  Logs fires, walks along the beach, dinner round the kitchen table - it must have been lovely but the Chancellor is certainly regretting it now.

So what went wrong? The short answer is that Darling spent too much time with Aitkenhead. During their two days together, the Chancellor clearly felt relaxed with a journalist from a friendly paper and he chatted away.  Of all the thousands of words he spoke during the weekend his comments about the worst recession for 60 years stood out to Aitkenhead and her editor when they looked at her notes and so this what made the headline.

The increasingly popular phenomenon of reality television might seem to have nothing in common with serious reporting of a very senior government minister but there are parallels. 

Reality TV producers film for hours and edit out a tiny proportion for broadcast.  Needless to say these moments are not those which show the subject in a relaxed, positive mood - rows, chaos and disasters are what make good telly - as we all know.

During media training sessions I explain to those who want to handle the media effectively that they need to focus and say less.  In practical terms if you want to do a media interview properly you need to focus - choose two or three key messages and stick to them when you talk to the journalist.  Don't give him or her anything else to go on.  If when you're doing a media interview you provide a variety of different thoughts, observations, facts and arguments you don't know what the journalist is going to take away with them.

Similarly if you want to do a media interview well spend less time on it.  Appear helpful and open but make it clear that you only have a limited amount of time.  This will allow you to handle the media effectively by focussing on two or three key messages which the journalist will have to use as they won't have anything else.

Alistair Darling would do better to concentrate on short, focussed interviews and save the fireside chats for family and friends.  As for reality TV - if you're approached just say no.