As this strangest of years splutters to a close, I’m beginning to wonder whether the effects of the pandemic, particularly during lockdown, have made us lose our faith in words.

It’s not as if we need less talk and more action – there’s not enough of the right ‘talk’ in the first place! How often do you attend (increasingly virtual) business meetings, discuss important issues and yet nothing gets resolved? How often do we hear someone giving your idea due reflection whilst sitting on the fence?

It can feel like you’re being paid lip service; empty talk with words that are absent of action or intention. It happens in meetings around our industry: someone thinks they know everything and they’re never wrong, until later. We can twist perceptions, but the reality of actually doing something positive won’t budge.

From small companies to high government offices, it’s too easy to simply troop into meetings, become distracted and indulge in ‘talking shop’, when what we really need are action-oriented champions within the team to communicate the company’s vision for a tangible plan of action.

Much is said about today’s business improvement strategies, yet there can be a tendency to focus on the tools and techniques, when more emphasis should actually be placed on management and its employees and how well they verbally converse with each other.

When difficult decisions need communicating, we often stutter to a halt in trying to articulate what we really want to say. Perhaps we should try flapping our arms in some kind of semaphore? It may stand a better chance of getting through than anything said with precision.

Maybe it’s just me, but Elvis Presley was right when he asked for a little less conversation and a little more action, please!

Mike Richardson, editor