Rick Perry's gaffe. We all do it so why was there no plan for when things went wrong?

Republican candidate Rick Perry’s recent lapse of memory in the US Republican Primary debate will join the annals of inept political communication. Endless replays of his gaffe will be played back to aspiring future politicians seeking to hone their own presentation skills. Something to go alongside Nixon and Kennedy or Quayle and Bentsen.

We should stand back a bit and be more measured.

53 seconds of embarrassment may have been the result of tiredness and nerves. Sometimes you just run out of track.

More likely, it is a mixture of over and under-preparation, under-preparation, in the sense of his reported avoidance of interview. He had insulated himself from media and voter scrutiny. Glad-handing and kissing babies are not enough. He had little practice in dealing with real-time questions and what can be thrown up. He delivered the same speech and a monologue at endless stage-managed conversations. He should not have been surprised when confronted with the tighter inquisition in the so-called “televised debates” which are nothing of the sort. Equally, If oratory and rhetoric have disappeared from Parliament in the UK, it is because of the demise of hustings.

Funnily enough, Perry might have come out well if he had adopted the debating strategy seen in the fictional debate in the last series of the West Wing. Candidates threw out the “guidelines” and emerged from behind their lecterns. A fiction but perhaps what the new politics ought to be about.

Perry was probably over-prepared. Candidates use their policy wonks to shape lines of argument and rebuttal. They rehearse detailed responses but the casualties are the sacrifice of spontaneity and character. In their preparations, Perry and his aids forgot to deal with normal human situations when stuff happens: like what to do when you fluff a line.

What riles us is being told to move on. The language of leadership. Bob Diamond, Barclays and saying sorry.

Our banking, political and military leaders have got us into a fine old pickle in the last few years. Bad enough, but what makes it worse is the way they highjack our emotions and seek to wipe the slate clean on their terms and timetable. A case in point is the performance of Barclay’s chief executive: Bob Diamond, who observed before the Parliamentary Select Committee recently, that the “period of remorse needs to be over.”

Unfortunately this tone of communication can be seen elsewhere amongst our leadership cadre. As the military debacle over kit and policy emerged in Afghanistan and Iraq, we heard from our military and political leaders variations on: “ We are where we are”, “Need to draw a line” and “Time to move on”.

We feel cheated that this form of linguistic cop out is used and the electorate looks on with disgust. Political memories can be short, but there is no doubt there is a pattern to this evasion of responsibility, and an underestimation of the emotional intelligence of the citizen.

Getting your message across powerfully, practically and persuasively - rule of three.

The next time you are at a trade fair or exhibition take time out to do a 360 degree whirl, view the banners and give them a score out of ten. You won’t find many that grab you.

Here is an opportunity to make yours work when others don’t.

I visit the NEC and ICC regularly and in a day take in several hundred of these displays. The number that stay in the mind are pitiful. Assume your audience scans you for a couple of seconds at max.

A visit to Earls Court or Olympia, provides fertile ground for observing one of the most misused business marketing tools around. We are talking of the seven foot pop-up roller banner and its cousin, the airship-dimensioned display frame. Erected apprehensively, knowing they may collapse on you or snap down like a mouse trap. We have all been there.

How many of them really catch the eye? Have company managers dominated the design process and content? Have the graphic artists, speech-writers and copywriters had their creative skills pruned? Have we kitted the stall-holders with tools that just don’t work? How many exhibitors pack up their displays, wondering whether the ROI has been justified? The same rituals are played out thousands of times a day.

This is how it goes. After an outlay for the stand, possibly running into thousands, our intrepid exhibitor lays out the gizmos to attract the punters. The bowl of sweets, key fobs, mouse pads and corporate blurb come out of the bag. The backdrops of course are the banners and this is what they remain - a glorious vehicle to market the organisation but woefully misused.

So where does it all go wrong? Well it could be the content of the banner for starters. There could be too much of it. As the punters walk the aisles they will give a fraction of a second to each banner, so you need something to bring them in. The name of the organisation and the logo don’t work and they are usually the dominant graphic and text. Punters want to know what you do, what makes you different and whether you are any good.

Banners can be run off in a day, but it takes time and skill to put one together which is eye-catching and discourages a high bounce rate. Walk the aisles and make a note of the banners which pull you in. Those that do make you think, tug at your emotions and give the reader something to do.

Next, borrow some rhetorical speech-writing devices from the political worlds i.e. rules of three, contrasting phrases, witty play on words and reversal phrasing eg “Building is what we do best and the best is what we build.” Useful and snappy copy for the press release and website. Living in a five second culture, we do not tolerate lots of text so keep it down. Cut out the jargon.

Space on a stand can be at a premium so why not use the banner itself as a demonstration tool? Something you can engage the client with. It is almost as if the production of the display banner becomes an end in itself when in reality it is a starting point for promoting goods and services.

Ineffective banners emphasise company name, logo and contact details and have no call to action. The punchline is simple: create banners that are pithy, witty and engaging.

Of course you need presenters who can bring them to life – but that is another story. www.younevercantell.co.uk

Does the Wikileak affair mean a return to pencil and paper? Do the leaks tell us anything we could not have guessed anyway?

It will take time for the dust to settle over the Wikileak revelations so that a reasoned assessment can be made of their publication. Words such as hypocrisy, embarrassment and incompetence will be bandied around by the population, as they see the revealed workings of its political and diplomatic elites. Governments should be receiving more in their input tray than high level gossip. Are the diplomatic positions revealed any different from what a professional analyst knew anyway? Security services and diplomats will jump and down over the “irresponsible” exposure of sources and positions taken. However much redacting takes place, humint may have been compromised, and there is only so much one can glean from remote sensing and drones.

The digital communication revolution has seen the inexorable onward and upward rise of traffic and there has been nothing to date to question this curve. The Wikileaks will give everyone pause for thought. What information is being hoovered up, why and to what end? We have information overload drowning in a sea of data.

For the first time, there has been a massive leakage of digital material to the global press. How much of this quarter of a million pages will provide interesting copy is questionable. In the five-second culture, the public will not be listening as the next story emerges.

Security tightening will be a given. Beyond that, we are likely to see a more circumspect use of the digital networks. We may see a return to a more humble way of communication i.e. word of mouth and paper and pencil. They have their flaws, notably dated and partial pictures of a situation. On the other hand easier to erase and deny.

How ever do young people learn the skills of oratory and debate? A golden opportunity for Michael Gove and his White Paper.

So we have yet another Education Minister bringing forward a White Paper to reconfigure the educational structure of the country. Business and other employers know that it is hard going, to get the right home-grown people with the right skills at the right time. The desire of educated and articulate workers to enter the country is symptomatic of this.

Never have so many qualifications been awarded to so many and yet something is missing. It might be the inability of school leavers and college students to be at ease when using their voice confidently, presenting and holding a coherent conversation. It might have something to do with the recent finding that people in the UK, are spending in excess of 30 hours a week in front of some type of screen, and detached from those with whom they are communicating.

Michael Gove would serve students and society really well, if he were to put in place more curriculum opportunities for students to learn speaking skills. It would prepare young people for later times, when they have to deal with customer-care, start up a business, contribute to political activity or be a confident member of the community. It is about assertiveness and self-worth.

The prescient observations of Gertrude Stein in the early 20th century are more apt than ever: "Let us stop communicating with each other, so that we can have some conversation."

When everyone belongs to Linkedin, Ecademy and their ilk, everyone belongs to nothing.

It is the business ritual after attending a fair or convention to scan the delegate list and peruse cards exchanged. Invitations to expand your connections follow. Said sites expand exponentially, more struts to the network are completed and the mesh gets tighter. This really is Grand Designs! So what?

It might seem heresy for this blog post to deliver a critique of a sister platform, but the question must be posed: how much business actually emerges from this accumulation of lists? What is the connection list for and how will I use it?

Is the expansion of one’s list merely an ego trip in sending out messages to others that you are an important person? Is your list just the outcome of the hoovering-up of names just like new trawling techniques for fishing? Is one collecting car numbers?

The warning signs come when you have established such a long list that you stop looking at it. Things get worse when you begin to realise that added connections are people who are already on the lists that you already know. The network becomes incestuous and parochial. When everyone knows the same everyone knows nothing.

The question arises: what is the connection list for? Is it a contingency list for when you are made redundant, an easy access mailing list or just a gizmo diary to beat the Filofax?

Pursuing the fishing metaphor further, nets need to be checked, mended and used in the right way. Your electronic business network is no different. The best conversations at a social gathering come from a diversity of interesting people bringing value to the table. Think upon the Linkedin network in the same way. Are your members likely to do business with each other? Do they complement or duplicate their skills? Are they decision-makers with their hands on the levers of power? Are they people with potential or status which is waning? Will your list develop a reputation that others will want to join without cajoling from you?

Others make judgements about you from the company you keep, and the virtual reality variant is no different. It used to be said that networking was about who you know. Actually, it is who knows you that counts and your connection strategy can shape this.

Sure as little apples how we pronounce H will provide a field day for how we read each other.

The recent BBC-reported and British Library-inspired discussion about whether we use “atch” or “haych” in our linguistic repertoire will be stimulating heated discussions all over the country. Language changes, the issue is whether it is evolutionary or otherwise.

Perhaps the sustained showing of television soaps, with their emphasis on vowels rather than consonants has brought about a fundamental change in our language. It brings into focus many of the prejudices and stereotypes we have about class, education and status. Sociolinguistics, schools, families and employers will have a field day over this confection.

In an increasingly competitive world for jobs, contracts, sales or votes, how we speak can have a disproportionate impact on success or otherwise. How many of us like our taped voice? When 93% of our first impressions are gained from how we look and how we use our voice, more attention should be paid to how we speak. When Shakespeare noted that “the apparel oft proclaims the man”, he should have added verbal dexterity.

I am working with three corporate business clients at the moment. It is interesting to see that in each case, much more attention is being paid to the presentational skills of their employees as they pitch, bid and tender. Schools and colleges don’t seem to give you a qualification in how you speak, but if they did, future applicants for jobs would certainly have the edge over the competition.

Politicians need to talk like the rest of us.

The political classes have a poor image and it is not just expenses that got us in this pickle - it could be how they converse. Imagine this scene. You have won your political seat at national or local level and then have to face the scrutiny of awkward questions, either from the electorate, press or television interview. You are under pressure to deliver honest answers and yet not embarrass colleagues, tell lies or be evasive. You don’t want to be misinterpreted and yet you want to give yourself wriggle room for the future. You want to display integrity, and candour and give an opinion on a situation which you may not fully comprehend. How do you defend a position publicly, which away from the crowds and glare of the cameras, you know to be wrong or indefensible? You want to keep your gesture clusters, leakages and tells under wraps. How do you keep all of these balls in the air at the same time?

The political class has developed a different genre of conversation to the rest of us. Yes, we know about the politician’s answer rephrasing a question to the one that enables an easier answer. And what about straw man thinking, giving your opponent a position he/she may not have adopted in the first place and then knocking the stuffing out of it? How does one develop the skills to practice these arts in the first place? Is it ingrained in the character and personality or is it learned by watching others and learning on the job?

Does our political representative sit down with pen and paper and create a flow chart to work out the myriad of question and answer permutations? Do our interviewees play mental chess games in their beds at night, anticipating the interviewer's opening gambit and then working out appropriate counter moves? Do they rehearse their answers so that the oratory and rhetoric seem convincing?

Not answering a question, rephrasing the question or dissembling are part and parcel of human discourse. What makes the political conversation interesting is that it is done in the public gaze. Talking "off the record" is a symptom of the dilemma.

Not surprisingly, the electorate can sniff out an answer that does not accord with common-sense. It is embarrassing and irritating to observe a political representative defending the indefensible. What a shock it would be to hear “ I don’t know” or “I haven’t thought about that.” or “I got that one wrong.” proffered as answers. We have heard it since the election but it would have been nice to have heard it before.

That is how the rest of us talk and if the Westminster bubble talked in the same manner then the cynicism the electorate displays for our representatives might be tempered. Coalition politics and a rebirth of the opposition provide opportunities not only for changed policy and personalities but, more importantly, how we conduct our conversations and interviews in the first place.

Dickensian advertising techniques for 21st century business and politics.

Is it time for some retro-advertising techniques for the business and political worlds?

You don’t get more 21st century than a Wolves-Aston Villa match. What is surprising, is seeing the style of one of the techniques used to advertise the event. In the last century and before, it was common place to see pedestrians walking the street and carrying display boards hung from the shoulders – a type of A board. They either advertised consumables or noted that the end of the world was nigh. So it was a surprise today, to see somebody doing the same and inviting one to buy tickets for the said match. Time, date, price and vendor details were read easily. You felt you were in a time warp and it certainly caught the attention. But this was not a one off.

A month before, I had seen something similar at various road junctions around the city. This time it was an entrepreneur and franchisee-holder advertising his fast food wares – a spoiling action to counter the opening of a competitor nearby. The imaginative spoiler employed forty students over the weekend. Recruited from a local college and paid above the minimum wage, the students worked in shifts at road junctions to convey the messages on their boards.

So what? Well, it was low key, simple, cheap – almost intermediate technology and in the slow-moving traffic flow, the message was put over effectively. It stood out from the usual marketing and advertising techniques with which we are bombarded. We have our trade fair vertical banners today, but somehow we don’t do just justice to the investment placed in their design and manufacture. Political hoardings are being ridiculed by subversive graffiti copywriters, whilst the rotating electronic devices lack a certain presence. Perhaps a revisit to Dickensian media might be worth a try. It really would be localism and if business is giving it a try why not politics?

Gender differences and use of the phone - lessons for business, politics and life.

An interesting piece of research from BT shows that men and women use the phone in different ways. Tarzan's calls show three times as much functional content (50%) compared with women (17%). Jane's calls by contrast measure three times as much personal conversation (28%) compared with her friend(10%). Men want to talk quantitively and women qualitatively. Obviously, a confirmation of anecdotal evidence and Men from Mars.... The next bit gets interesting. Much of our communication is transitory, cryptic and perfunctory or else gushing with emotional overload. Extremes of a kind. Lessons here for political dialogue, tendering in business, networking, and the myriad of other contexts where we communicate. Endearments, elaboration of thinking and the expression of nuance are the casualties, whilst on the emotional side it can be difficult to assess what is important. Either way there are casualties of misunderstanding. We confuse listening with hearing as we do looking with seeing. As Gertrude Stein observed in the 1930's, long before the appearance of Twitter and other social media - "Let us stop communicating with each other so that we can have some conversation."

Clear diction at the G20 conference helps Cameron and Merkel.

A little reported comment by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor at the Canadian G20 conference is worth noting. She observed how David Cameron's clear diction and careful delivery helped her understanding of his English and what he was saying. Here is a powerful message for the politician seeking to influence or the entrepreneur pitching for the next opportunity in Britain. Not many of us like the sound of our voices and even fewer do anything about it. Speaking well gives you authority, influence and status. Have you noticed that how you speak can get you better or poorer service? We are not talking of the strangulated sounds from the Royal family or the extravagences of regional accents, rather a delivery that is clear, free of jargon and colloquialisms, not distracting and makes for interested listening. In a competitive business world we tend to underplay one of the most valuable assets we have - well-spoken English. Foreigners are appreciative and we downplay it. Our exports, tourism and diplomacy would all benefit from Merkel's experience. One thing is for certain in their future meetings, Merkel will approach them knowing that a major communication hurdle has been overcome and the content of debate has a chance of being heard.