Fight on the beaches! — Doris and Bertie Ltd

We love this anecdote from The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill, compiled by Dominique Enright:

There is a story that an American general once asked Churchill to look over the draft of an address he had written. It was returned with the comment ‘Too many passives and too many zeds.’ The general asked him what he meant and was told: ‘Too many Latinate polysyllabics like “systematize”, “prioritize”, and “finalize”. And then the passives. What if I had said, instead of “we shall fight on the beaches”, “Hostilities will be engaged with our adversary on the coastal perimeter”?

Sadly, all too much business writing is reminiscent of "Hostilities will be engaged with our adversary on the coastal perimeter".

So if you struggle to get the people in your organisation to talk like human beings, point them to Winston.

Inspiring leaders use short, simple, powerful words.

Not pompous corpspeak packed with off-putting nonsense about synergizing innovative technologies, incentivizing customer engagement and integrating frameworks of excellence.

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