Communicating strategy - a book review

I've been having an unlucky streak with my reading recently (see here and here). So, I am pleased to say that the latest read, "Communicating Strategy", by Phil Jones, was pretty good, though not great.

As with my previous reviews, I am bound to state upfront that I had high expectations of this book. I really enjoyed parts of it; Phil Jones clearly has a huge amount of experience as a coach and performance consultant and the book contains many interesting examples of how to approach strategy development and communication. The style is easy and I liked the fact that he did not provide a simple checklist reminding us to think about the audience, build a compelling story, consider the mode of communication etc. (see here for a posting on my aversion to checklists!), but rather opted for a more rhetorical approach (putting out questions without direct answers at the end of each section to make you think).

I particularly liked the second chapter, which describes "Ten Heresies" in his own thinking towards communicating strategy. That "people are not stupid", that you can "trust people" and that "you can over communicate" are certainly positions that I entirely agree with.

But what I liked most about the book was the constant reminders it contained to think consciously about what and how you communicate to whom.

It is easy to get into a rut in communications - everyone has a style they are most comfortable with and tend to use it irrespective of audience and need (I personally find it very helpful simply to try different communications techniques/modes just to force myself to think consciously about what it is I want to communicate from as many different stakeholders' perspectives - even if you end up shifting back to your comfort zone - as I personally undoubtedly often do - the act of considering things from multiple angles typically gives you insights that improve your thinking).

This is a good book with a lot of simple advice. Beware though that it also contains considerable references to NLP techniques - certainly interesting but not everyone's cup of tea.