My digital companion keeps playing voice memos. It’s making my ability to plug my exceptionally cool selection into the communal speakers nigh-on-impossible. Humiliation setting? It’s intent on playing excerpts from motivational podcasts or me in hushed tones saying something significant during a notepadless moment. I’ve just spent 10 minutes learning that Marmoud Dawlish‘s Waiting for her, isn’t a great new album, or a piece of patient insight but a Palestinian poet  capturing expectation in three parts. This isn’t helping me complete my work this evening.

One announcement midway through my Dutch Gabba hit a chord. Unfortunately I’ve no idea where it came from or I would provide the link for you to chase away. I urgently suggested I read up on an choice based approach to strategy and that at a later date I move away from a day to day obsession with strategic imperatives and the singular nature of a plan to an alternative higher world.

WTF? 

Could this cowardly .mp3 change the way I work with problems? At 80mph on the M4 I felt this was the case. In my estuary accent I insist that I augment my strategic approach. Consider the incoming flux to the plan by reviewing a set of “Possibilities, Probabilities and Consequences” surrounding what had previously been a linear approach.

I can see why this could have some clear value for me. I ask rather abruptly to review what could happen, the likelihood of this and it’s impact. On further thought here, it’s scenario planning genetically woven into the fabric of strategy. Perhaps even these three words assume that choice and variability is a part of the world we work in. Multiple roads leading to multiple places even? Some of which we can foresee and approach critically making us better prepared to get a plan landed. Those possibilities incapable of predicting, I guess, are a butterfly flap in the chaos.

The Army or possibly Navy, I forget which, stand by a belief that “No strategy, survives first contact”. I’m not sure how much this fills me with a sense of security. Surely in any plan one assumes some likely occurrences. In consumer goods, a competitor could increase spend prior to your launch. In our world a Payor will ask for health economic data. Surely in the military there is an expectation for the enemy to pop up every now and then, from a certain direction, holding something or other?  With PPC in place would we have more robust strategy? I think we probably would. Certainly it might help at least first, second contact keeping us aligned mid barrage.

I’m going to see what impact this distant interuption has on my strategic process. Whether it helps me shape my thinking, prepare me for the foreseeable, or drive me mad.

I have after all been asked by myself.

67 of us gathered for a town hall style session that covers two graphs, a review of our work, an introduction to new joiners, a Tango lesson c/o Pablo and Elizabeth, an awesome Argentinian wine tasting and pallet of Qulimes. No food was available as short notice Empanadas are an impossibility.

Broadly speaking we are above plan, have some amazing talent just joined us across Creative, Tech and Ebee, doing some of our best work, can’t dance and continue to be able to clear a well stocked bar faster than most. We also are on the hunt for ADs/AEs and Artworkers to fuel our growth this year.

An additional joy was to be joined for this session by a contingent of  pals from Chicago. All of whom launched themselves into the chest to chest Tango lesson, that left Debbie with a life long dance partner, Mel with a face imprinted on her decolletage and Ian dancing cheek to cheek newbee James (James led of course).

The weather has improved enough for the balcony to be in regular use. Like all good parties everyone congregates in one spot, which, unless it’s chucking it down or -5 is the balcony. If you every doubted it was impossible to get 60 people on a balcony 12 metres square, come by on a Thursday/Friday night and look up from Coventry Street to Haymarket House. What looks like an over subscribed  private members bar with a view down to Piccadilly and across to Covent Garden is in fact us lot getting on. If you see a girl up there with binoculars, that’s Natalie keeping a Neighbourhood Watchful eye on Platinum lace (local business discounts available), if someone is wearing a lab coat that’s Adam. It’s not unheard of for us to be shouted up at with a request to share “Where the entrance is?/How do I get in?/Is that a club?” from Leicester Square punters. Competency interviews, a case study review is our witty reply. Ha ha ha…

The brightening of our evenings and better weather seems to be kicking off the season for us. We plan some great events, small and large. From film screenings, picnics, bbqs and the occasional odd ball night as well. What staggers me more than anything is the amazing ability our cleaner has to make the change from party venue to office by the morning. If only she could work the transformation on all of us. A miracle worker.

A delight to beapart.

Quite a few people at Hive have at some time spent, either a year out or part of their 2-month sabbatical heading off to hot place to teach. Kieran’s recently been to Asia teaching art and English. Fully immersed in the jungle , chalk in hand. Kieran said one of his biggest challenges was not speaking the local dialect and the subsequent need to show the children everything he wanted them to do. He returned thinner, a beaming smile and a load of experience in communication, heuristics and the benefits of fish sauce on rice, rice and rice.

These two recent experiences made me consider the oft said rarely followed cliché; ‘See one. Do one. Teach one’. It seem especially useful if we are training those who have the responsibility to walk the earth and either retrain or facilitate a process or activity. These 6 words also should give us some confidence to avoid double clicking PowerPoint, and get experiential about our skills transfer.

These 6 words, suggest it’s best to embed theory into the practical, establish the task in another’s hands as a basecamp for the push to your own heart and hands. Being somewhat fidgety, I’m sure it’s the way I’ve learnt most aspects of my working life.

One of the most difficult (work?) tasks I’ve learnt in the last few years has been double handed spay casting. The mighty Gary Scott barely mentioned history, flex ratios, river topography, ergonomics, rod performance or line requirement. But the practical aspects, the feel of casting, the experience of a rod and line attached to you, all whilst watching him cast beautifully. We then got on with riverside-mid-cast-wader-clad-spooning on the River Tay with him guiding me through a few dozen casts. As my arms and shoulders started to get set the thinker in me was allowed to follow. I got less likely to hit the trees and increasingly shot the line across the river onto the dark peaty water. Any mistakes were corrected in the same way, hands on, practical. Never breaking out of this pattern.

That other famous human behaviour expert and fisherman Mark Twain once said (deep voice, Southern American drawl, mint julep in hand). “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way”. It’s a complementary view, and one that reflectively I grasp now. Although the ‘do one’ section of this particular session must be a tough ask.

I’ve been training a lot of facilitators over the last 6 months. Getting a network of partnerships to globally provide a constructionist technique to understand patients and their relationship with their medicine. If I had these 6 words tattooed on my arm  I’m sure the Italian or French learning curve would have not been anyway near as steep as it was. Now prior to meeting a new facilitator they receive a video of a real session run by another facilitator in another country and region. Then on arrival during our face-to-face session I run a pretend session. Working through the facilitation guide using the support materials and highlighting anything that might happen. Given facilitators all love open-ended questions, it’s an interactive session, detailed, fun and thoughtful. Then together we work through a couple of co-facilitated exercises, then it’s back behind the mirror for me and the ‘Do one’. The session is run with real patients, for a real disease, and with a real need to learn something. The film we make during this session and the follow up interview with the new facilitator is then used for the next training session. Only after ‘See one’ do we start to talk about the technique, approach and academic justification. But the case studies are very much as punctuation rather than a foundation to the technique.

Writing this its made me think of a strategist I worked with in the early years of Hive. Midst workshop design session she was pretty passionate about the need to avoid constantly returning to the learnings from a task. It was a real moment for me, “We don’t need to spoon feed these people they are not children. They will get it in their own way. Just have a respect for their intellect.” is one of those phrase that I consider now mine!

I guess this is an add on to the 6 word approach, allow the audience to process what the exercise was designed to show. I guess these 6 words can help us create that objective connection between seeing and doing better. If the connections not being made then, improve the exercise not repeat the conclusion.

Our industry has a tendency to go rational.ppt prior to considering experiential.pow. It’s certainly easier to get approved through the traditional channels. Twain’s cat exercise on Zinc? I think not.

High up on my development plan list for this year has been to increase my exposure to EMAP markets. Get out of the US and EU and explore more. The last month or so I’ve been on a Business class tour that’s I think gets me to a week away from completing my 25th EMAP market deep dive. I’ve been front man/facilitator/scapegoat/fixer alongside the London based team in rolling out the plan for 2 brands. With an agenda that takes a market, a multidisciplinary team and over four days roles out the commercial, medical and payor strategy. Working through the localisation, milestones and interconnections needed to drive a successful Local/global launch.

These fantastic sessions have given me exposure to working with markets that previously I have known, at least through a few TCs, at most VC/1 day bullet F2Fs. Having 4 days together has helped me see what we do on behalf of global brands from an alternate perspective, as well as pick up some pretty cool receipts with which to ‘awe-out’ our finance guys. The teams have all been wonderful to work with, seriously different from US/EU sessions, in terms of tone, approach and working practices. The time in between has been so valuable to get to grips with the idiosyncrasies of healthcare systems, payor groups and selling culture all helping me climb the learning curve. It has added to a stack  of reading and discussions I kicked off last year. Putting me much more confident in having an informed view on Korea, Australia, Saudi, and Chile etc etc etc. And a list of senior level decision makers happy to have their brains picked.

The week before last I was in Singapore on one of these trips (recovering from an injury resulting from 3am bungy jump) and out for dinner with a Malay Chinese management consultant. We kicked off on the amazing diversity of markets working in and out of Singapore. And a comment from me; that these very same Asian markets 10 years ago would have been wrongly perceived by us Western marketeers as largely similar – fixable with one plan, and little support from centre to optimise a central strategy. She’s feisty as hell, buying me dinner and sat with her Cambridge born head/media/digital/Asia/C suite current love interest. “It’s good that Europeans finally are understanding that Asian markets are diverse, and that within each market are massive differences locally as well. This is not Europe where you are all similar, sharing culture, food, people. We welcome that maturity!”. Eh?! Glance, saki, swig, conch sashimi. What resulted was a interesting insight into how us Europeans can be seen by some of our Asian equivalents in what became known as “an Asian view on Europe”. Now don’t get me wrong. I was being wound up. Punished for my neocolonial approach of apologising for a legacy. Only to have an equivalent European view chucked back at me. Bless her.

Although tongue in cheek. It’s a prevalent view of little old EU, and refreshing and rare to see such similarity. I guess your standing point always impacts your perspective. Kind of obvious really. Perhaps to collate, stereotype and hetrogenise (word?) is a human trait we all share. With proximity driving an understanding of the local nuance, and the importance of the differences between Venice, Birmingham.Hamburg, Hanoi, Hua Hin or Hong Kong regardless of regional bias.

It’s been an interesting journey. Taking eight months out of the world of digital healthcare communications. Completely out. On another planet, changing nappies and feeding the lovely little Jack Reynolds for the first eight months of his life. And now catapulting back in and seeing what’s changed.

People like to say nothing changes. That’s an easy thing to say. From what I’ve seen, things do change. They have changed quite a bit. The world of digital healthcare communications is more sophisticated. Use of technology has evolved. Our world has moved on. We are smarter and braver now.

Clients used to ask just to see the evidence on how our audiences interact with the digital world. Which people are using what? What kind of interactions are they having? But now there’s increasing sophistication in the way we’re obtaining and interpreting the oceans of data. This means we can ask smarter questions and predict how to change behaviour through our digital channels.

The fears around social media have retracted further thanks to the digital pioneers who paved the way. They’ve helped others see that if there is a will, there will be a way. I was just checking out an awesome You Tube channel that Emma and Veronique set up for a client. It’s exciting to see it live and gathering momentum around the world.

Looking forward to being back with the best team on the planet.

Looking forward to getting smarter and braver with you all.

Midst discussions, it is clear that our  industry  is less regarded this side of the pond than Europe, LatAm or Asia.  The move from drug peddler to health outcome partner is pretty vital for us given that a large part of our work is personalising the medicine experience. Impossible to do if your reputation is far from trusted. As such our approach often builds from a point of expertise. This expertise has traditionally been centred around the molecule and science surrounding it, but ever increasingly it’s sharing understanding of  the patient’s medicines experience, and working on sub optimal aspects – either from the patients, physicians or health systems perspective. Pending a questions – how does one build a therapeutic alliance when little trust exists? Is it enough to sit back and wait time out, or can a seed change in culture, practices and positive demonstration halt the cynicism that sales are the ultimate judge for health businesses?

As entrepreneurs,  it’s our nature to get on with it and see what happens. not regardless of the environment but sometimes despite it.  I’m sure its actually helpful to have something, whether that be a perception or physician barrier to react against. Something tangible to live up to  against.  Certainly having being the little kid picked on by the big agency helped us in our first and second year. 

Its damn fun out here, spreading patient centricity, experience design and all the fun stuff, we’ve been doing for ages from London. Even if the foundations to build on is a little lower than elsewhere.  

I have been blogging years now. Long enough to know that I need to improve my written English. At school learning grammar was unfashionable and to date I have managed to get away with business English for the day job.  My proposals are filled with cold, precise consultancy. I think it’s time I went back to school and improved my  readability. I am on the look out for a night class to help which led me to ping a mate who is a master of letters (waistcoat, ink pen, knows what a adverb is – you get the drift). He sent me what follows. Accompanied with a simple “follow this and leap forward”. Masterful advice.

Politics and the English Language by George Orwell.

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad — I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen — but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:

1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate. Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)

2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder. Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossia)

3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity? Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)

4. All the ‘best people’ from the gentlemen’s clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis. Communist pamphlet

5. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion’s roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream — as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as ‘standard English’. When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o’clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma’amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens! Letter in Tribune

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged.

DYING METAPHORS. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a ‘rift’, for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.

OPERATORS OR VERBAL FALSE LIMBS. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.

PRETENTIOUS DICTION. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i. e., e. g. and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers(1). The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the size formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one’s meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

MEANINGLESS WORDS. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning(2). Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, ‘The outstanding feature of Mr. X’s work is its living quality’, while another writes, ‘The immediately striking thing about Mr. X’s work is its peculiar deadness’, the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations — race, battle, bread — dissolve into the vague phrases ‘success or failure in competitive activities’. This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing — no one capable of using phrases like ‘objective considerations of contemporary phenomena’ — would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase (‘time and chance’) that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier — even quicker, once you have the habit — to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for the words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry — when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech — it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash — as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot — it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip — alien for akin — making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning — they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another — but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. The will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line’. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is calledelimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one’s elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning’s post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he ‘felt impelled’ to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: ‘[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany’s social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe.’ You see, he ‘feels impelled’ to write — feels, presumably, that he has something new to say — and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence(3), to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defence of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.

To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a ‘standard English’ which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a ‘good prose style’. On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one’s meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one’s words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

 i.   Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
 ii.   Never use a long word where a short one will do.
 iii.   If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
 iv.   Never use the passive where you can use the active.
 v.   Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
 vi.   Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don’t know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognise that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin where it belongs.

1946

1) An interesting illustration of this is the way in which the English flower names which were in use till very recently are being ousted by Greek ones,snapdragon becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not becoming myosotis, etc. It is hard to see any practical reason for this change of fashion: it is probably due to an instinctive turning-awayfrom the more homely word and a vague feeling that the Greek word is scientific.

2) Example: ‘Comfort’s catholicity of perception and image, strangely Whitmanesque in range, almost the exact opposite in aesthetic compulsion, continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric accumulative hinting at a cruel, an inexorably serene timelessness… Wrey Gardiner scores by aiming at simple bull’s-eyes with precision. Only they are not so simple, and through this contented sadness runs more than the surface bitter-sweet of resignation’. (Poetry Quarterly.)

3) One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.

George Orwell: ‘Politics and the English Language’
First published: Horizon. — GB, London. — April 1946

 Last week I had the pleasure of reporting on an adboard for a neuroprotective agent. I’m semi-confident with my neurology experience, but the sessions blew my microglia. I listened to fascinating debates about how the brain degenerates in certain diseases and how drugs are thought to slow the process.

Like many people going all the way back to Aristotle, songwriter Morrissey once asked “Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind rule the body?” Morrissey would not be pleased with the fact that much of our contemporary neuroscience understanding is rooted in the brains of mice and monkeys, but he might agree that it shapes a definitive answer: mind and body are one and the same. What’s on your mindbody? What’s the mindbody of evidence in this case? If I told you you had a beautiful mindbody, would you….etc.

In the opening remarks, the clinicians on the ad-board were unanimously neutral on the drug under question. By the end of the day, all but one held some degree of positive opinion. Two standard acceptances we make in healthcare comms are 1) Doctors don’t care about MOA and 2) Doctors want simple maths and pretty p-values.  These doctors were looking to the MOA to swing their opinion on efficacy. I know there are regulatory restrictions on supporting clinical efficacy by way of MOA, but in no other instance have I ever seen a preclinical and clinical story so intertwined. There is plenty of conjecture in this particular neurodegenerative framework, and clinicians positively have to understand what is driving results.

For a flavour: the photograph here is of a human foetal astrocyte. This is a brain cell that nurtures the well-being of nearby neurons. Under certain conditions it changes its shape entirely, becoming leaner, meaner, neglectful. Swathes of neurons die when astrocytes go bad. Let’s not forget that all of our mindbodies have the ability to turn against us in ways like this.

In terms of the maths, neurologists are geniuses. When a biostatistician presented after lunch, I expected this to be a snooze session. Instead my typing became ever more frantic as clinicians weighed in on sensitivity analyses, artefacts and noise, imbalance and consistency across studies. With the ABPI also recently speaking out about absolute vs relative risk reduction, I felt compelled to refresh my regulatory knowledge.

Neurology is a big one and I’ve resolved to keep digging deeper into the science of all my brands: Parkinsons, BDD, schizophrenia, epilepsy – whether, like a neurodegenerative disease , they are currently active or not.  There is a world of debate out there. I’m not qualified to challenge: my job is instead to transform proof and hypothesis into benefits for ill people. And, in my own nerdy downtime, to ponder the possible connections between these different and very unfortunate diseases.

Wooly hats off the the team for combining nature, science, coding, art and of course bees.

Engineering : James Folkes
Coding and prototyping : Tom Whiston
Additional coding : Chris Godley 

Technician : James Griffiths
Contact microphones created by Dave TechDiff 
MAX/MSP Code for audio : Tom Whiston + James Griffiths
Prototype traktrix horn soundsystem + engineering : Danger Noise Audio 

Video editing : Elliot Holbrow 
Photography : Andy Brown + Nathan Gibson
Additional photography : Shaun Bloodworth 

Thanks to : Vanessa, Lynette and the amazing Festival of the Mind staff.
SasQwax and Distorted Panda for music and hardware.

Still photography by Andy Brown.

So much of our time is spent trying to tie down and summarise. This week sees James and I up to our eyes in propositions galore for a global brand. Specifically we’ve been investigating the properties associated with being real. Our brand finds itself surrounded by many medicines that are clearly miles away from the gritty world they work in. It’s lots of running on beaches and special days celebrated with perfect white teeth and Californian ass. I don’t doubt you know the sort of work I mean; shame isn’t it?

Whilst trying to find some guidance. I found some gold online. I hadn’t heard of American 20th-century writer William Carlos Williams let alone his masterwork The Red Wheelbarrow. A few clicks and Imagism joins my vocabulary. The 20th Century Anglo American poetry movement that favoured precision of imagery, and clear, sharp language. WCW demonstrates that the real has enormous power. Not the realistic or realism we consider tonal styles. Cynical Hipstamatic settings and the like. Imagism seeks things and a directness of presentation and economy of language. It all seems very relevant for our task in hand.

The red wheel barrow

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

Whilst I’m a million miles from knowing much about literature, this style reminded me of Hemingway’s six word memoir. Hemingway, midst bar fight, civil war or massive rum bender, according to literary legend, was once challenged to write a short story in only six words. Hemingway’s six-word story read:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”.

Powerfully real. I wonder whether Imagism is simple journalistic poetry and whether our propositions can achieve this power. Can this be achieved with a less than individual autonomy? Both Hemingway and Williams worked with painters, photographers and the like. I can’t find any proof that their writing benefited from a collaborative approach. How can we get to this place when the system insists on workshops, iteration and buy in? Would Hemingway be good with a flip-chart?