Reviews
Skill assessments rest on two properties: every instrument has to earn both
Skill assessments explained: what the words mean, the two properties every instrument has, what each type can see, and what no assessment can measure at all.
Desk
Reporting Desk
Current developments in business skills, books and vocabulary and what they change for the people affected.
Rules
How to read recommended books critically
A practical guide to reading recommended books critically: five types of business book, the failures they share, and a seven-step method for better reading.
Industry
Financial literacy: vocabulary for four money topics
A financial literacy glossary of terms for earning, spending, borrowing and protecting, with distinctions for reading money documents and comparing offers.
Costs
A decision skills case study: rewriting one invented order choice until it can be decided
An invented decision skills case study that fills in one order choice field by field, with two rewrites of the decision statement before any evidence arrives.
Maintenance
Decision cost words: sunk, opportunity, marginal and committed costs
Decision skills cost vocabulary: sunk against recoverable, opportunity against out-of-pocket, marginal against average, fixed against committed cost.
Guides
Corporate jargon case study: what a repair must add to four paragraphs
A corporate jargon case study of one invented announcement, quoted paragraph by paragraph, with the facts each paragraph left out and what a repair must add.
Reviews
Twelve jargon metaphors compared with the original fields they came from
Twelve corporate jargon metaphors traced to their original fields, with the claim each one smuggles in and the shorter sentence that replaces it honestly.
Guides
Four axes of workplace communication: synchronous, durable, addressed, push or pull
Four axes sort workplace messages: synchronous or asynchronous, durable or ephemeral, addressed or broadcast, push or pull, and a test for tool-born terms.
Rules
Nine business vocabulary mistakes compared, one word carrying two silent meanings
Nine business vocabulary mistakes where one word carries two meanings, from customer and client to partner and guarantee, and who decides which applies.
Maintenance
Business acumen questions: what people ask and what is true
Business acumen questions and the counter-question each needs, from whether it is profitable to how many customers there are and what owning something means.
Industry
4 points worth checking on decision skills examples
Twelve decision skills examples of badly stated choices, from a topic on an agenda to a false binary, with the reframe that makes each one decidable.
Rules
Decision skills guide: five roles, and why reversibility sets the process
A decision skills guide to roles and sizing: decider, recommender, consulted, informed and veto, and why reversibility rather than cost sets the process.
Features
Communication skills metrics: five states, proxies, and one direct check
Communication skills metrics: five states from delivered to acted on, what evidence each needs, where proxies mislead, and one direct check for understanding.
Reviews
Communication skills mistakes seen from the repair side
Nine communication skills mistakes, from a buried ask to a date agreed under pressure, each with the repair and what the writer was protecting themselves from.
Features
Corporate jargon compared: a term of art against a phrase doing social work
Corporate jargon sorted into four piles, from term of art to phrase doing social work, with the three questions that place any new phrase in the right one.
Industry
Business vocabulary metrics that predict anything
Business vocabulary for metrics: measure, ratio, rate and percentage point kept apart, plus stock against flow and what a denominator actually claims.
Maintenance
How business vocabulary changes, with an adoption test, a retirement test and a way to date a term
A field guide to how new business words arrive and how old ones retire, with an adoption test, a retirement test and a method for dating a term.
Maintenance
Decision skills fields compared: statement, constraints, criteria and reversibility
Decision skills as eight fields of a record: the statement, objective, constraints, alternatives, criteria, evidence, uncertainty and reversibility, defined.
Costs
Communication skills defined: purpose against audience, hearing against listening
Communication skills defined term by term: purpose against audience, hearing against listening, clear against short, and how the channel changes the message.
Reviews
How to work through business acumen as six ordered questions about one purchase
Business acumen as six questions asked in order about one decision, from what is being bought to which risks can be priced and which can only be watched.
Features
Corporate jargon sorts by grammar, not by taste, using a recoverability test
Corporate jargon sorted by grammar rather than by taste: the three constructions that delete the actor, and the recoverability test for any euphemism.
Guides
Revenue against income, profit against cash: business vocabulary split into pairs
Business vocabulary defined in pairs: revenue against income, profit against cash, margin against markup, with the one difference that separates each.