Category: working in the open
- Making better corporate video ()
If the company or organisation you work for makes a video about a project or a piece of work, it’s important to make sure that the result is actually a video about the work. Too often, the video is treated as PR, and turns into something horrible, boring and unwatchable. Here are a few tips […]
- Collecting things ()
Doing future-you a favour This is a tip for people who find themselves in charge of communicating over time on behalf of a team, an organisation, or a piece of work: collect things. Collect things that future-you will find useful. Of course you don’t know which things they’ll be, because you’re not future-you yet. So […]
- Strategic thinking with blog posts and stickers ()
Cheap, quick, better than strategy documents The creative team I used to be part of at GDS pioneered the blogging-and-stickers approach to creative strategic thinking. The idea is basically this: you think out loud, on your blog, over a long period of time. At least months. Probably years. Each new post is about one thing, […]
- My favourite government posters ()
low-cost ambient broadcasting Various government teams have been making some fantastic posters over the last few years. But there isn’t a single place where they’re all collated and aggregated and curated. I thought about trying to do that, but I don’t have time to commit to it and keep it up to date. Rather than […]
- Thinking about permission ()
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Vienna to see the “It’s ok” poster in an exhibition as part of the Biennale. The exhibition was called “How will we work?”, and it explored possible futures (and interesting presents) for workplaces and workers. Some of the ideas on show were quite dystopian and depressing, others were laugh-out-loud funny. […]
- Stickers tell tiny stories ()
they help your organisation express itself Back when GDS was still young, the team I worked with earned a nickname: “the department of stickers.” Ha ha, yes. On that team were talented producers and designers who did everything: came up with the right words, arranged for each sticker to be designed, paid for all the stickers to […]
- Digital is something you are ()
So let your people be it I made these stickers a few weeks ago, to help the team I’m working with these days make a point and spread some love. The point the stickers are trying to make is that “digital” isn’t about technology. It doesn’t mean adding more computers to fix a problem. It […]
- Don’t say you’re a “thought leader” – just show you can think ()
If you want to be good at “thought leadership”, the last thing you should do is say on your home page: “We are thought leaders,” or “We do thought leadership.” Just declaring your organisation “thought leaders” does not make it a leader of anything, except perhaps PR. Instead, you should actually lead with some thinking. Start […]
- Pick a domain that’s easy to say ()
A tip for anyone who’s thinking of creating any kind of web project: if you intend to register a domain name to go with it, pick one that’s easy to say out loud. The easy way to do that is to pretend that you’re two years into the future, and that your web project has […]
- Thinking out loud about internal comms ()
Quite a large chunk of the work I did during my last year or two at the Government Digital Service related to internal communication: helping the senior management explain their strategic thinking to the people in the wider organisation. Internal communication is hard. It gets harder as an organisation grows. It also gets more important, because the […]