Clarity, Originality, Simplicity

A recent edition of The Economist had a spoof advice column in its business section, with this question and answer.

My manager often says that “we need to go to the balcony.” Everyone else nods, but then they don’t actually go anywhere. As far as I can see our office doesn’t even have a balcony. In a meeting the other week one person said “this is a two-finger point” and the person running the meeting replied “let’s double-click on that later.” I have no idea what is going on half the time. What can I do to keep up?

Just hang in there. Incomprehension is an enormous part of office life. You will eventually develop a sense of what phrases like this mean. In fact, you will eventually start saying this kind of rubbish yourself and someone else will write to me about you.

And now, my 300 word response…

Clarity, Originality, Simplicity

This blog is two years old. The first post was on July 3, 2022. If you’re still reading, thank you. (If you’re not, well, you’re not.)

So here is my vision for the next two years. Eyeballing the blog’s performance to date, it’s clear when I run the numbers that the blog has yielded a synergistic blend of low-hanging fruit coupled with a curated product that consistently delivers even more than 110 percent.

Following what I am confident were best practices, and without moving the goalposts, I have tried to bring to the table the blog’s underlying core competencies, or strengths: words! Using words as leverage, then, despite lots of moving parts in a robust competitive environment that is the blogosphere today, more than once I’ve had to engage in blue sky thinking as I’ve circled back to prioritizing the blog’s key takeaways.

In mid-2023 I had an aha moment—something of a game changer, you might say—when without reinventing the wheel I realigned the blog’s key performance indicators to better gain traction as I sought enhanced reader buy-in. And the bottom line? You, dear readers, are the deliverables.

Always aspiring to utilize cutting edge digitization opportunities, I ran a beta version up the flagpole in November last year. Results were mixed. Initially, I accepted that it is what it is and was tempted to leave everything on the back burner. But, to my surprise, as the re-envisioned approach broke down the silos that impacted the blog’s performance, I grasped what could be achieved by thinking outside the box. The bandwidth we needed was there all along.

You can be assured that the core values securing mission alignment will sustain this blog going forward. You can be assured of the clarity, originality, and simplicity you have come to expect.

[300 words] 

More Easier

 

More Easier

            This morning I corrected a young woman who said something was “more easier.” Not so, I said; it was either “easier” or “more easy.” Used as an adjective, I told her, one could say a task was “easy/easier/easiest.” (“Easy” can also be an adverb, a noun or even a verb, according to Wiktionary…)

            I don’t normally correct people’s speech, tempted though I am. (I once corrected the grammar on a consent form before having a root canal.) This woman, however, welcomed the correction and explanation. She was a native Russian speaker, a refugee who has been in Spokane for a year and she and I were at the Barton School, a language program at First Presbyterian Church in Spokane.

I’ve been volunteering there for about eight months, interacting with students from around the world. Some are beginners; others, like my student, already have credible spoken English. Many are refugees; others are in the US for family reasons. What they have in common, though, is a commitment to improving their English fluency. The courage, patience and perseverance of these students is humbling. I cannot imagine waking up one morning in a country whose language was totally alien to me. My mind often goes back to the summer of 1992, when thanks to a Whitworth University grant I spent six weeks in Guatemala learning Spanish. I still recall the frustrations I had learning the grammar, especially a mysterious thing called the subjunctive, and not pronouncing words correctly. Fortunately, my well-being didn’t depend on speaking Spanish. The Barton students, though, have no choice but to try and master our devilishly difficult, illogical, inconsistent language. (Just think how we pronounce ough in cough, tough, through, thorough, dough, thought and drought.)

Yes, English is a difficult language. If only it were more easier.

[300 words]