Clarity of expression is an art form and one that is put to the test in the modern business world by emails and instant messages where accuracy is often sacrificed to brevity.

I receive lots of IM's that simply say "Hi". Does the sender mean "Hello how are you today"? Or are they simply finding out if I am working that day? Or do they want to know if I can help them right away? Probably the latter.

Legal documents used to be drafted without punctuation so that there could be fewer disputes over their meaning. I am reminded of this in some of the texts I receive.

I recall seeing a software licence drafted by a computer programmer - it definitely resembled source code! I also once saw a legal agreement that used the expression "hereinafterbefore" which at any level does not work.

Lack of clarity in communication can be a catastrophe in the military and is often the sign of poor leadership. in any field. 

Simplicity, structure and brevity of expression are for me the signs of good communication.

“A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who instead of aiming a single stone at an object takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.” Samuel Johnson.

We all probably know that in any difficult situation at work and at home a positive attitude helps to resolve the problem and to see alternative solutions and opportunities.

However it's a bit of a truism and a statement of the obvious to "think positively" and it can be both hard to do and to turn from a slightly feel good factor into something of real value and use.

It seems though that there is now some surprisingly clear scientific support the benefits of positive thinking not only in problem resolution but also in adopting a healthier life style. See this link for a good blog on the subject. Research in test groups appears to demonstrate the value for individuals of adopting a can do approach.

So when Henry Ford said "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right." he definitely got it pretty much correct.

I recall arriving on a wet and windy winter's day at Swindon railway station in the west of England for a pre meet in the station buffet. This station has a long history on Great Western Railway but on such a day it was depressing.

We also had a seemingly intractable problem to resolve with a customer contract that had endless moving parts and different bits of the organisation involved and pulling in alternative directions.

The regular salesman who knew the account was also on holiday which didn't help. However for some reason he was replaced by his boss's boss. He was a larger than life character in every sense of the word and had seen it all before.

He listened to our woes for five minutes as the trains pulled in and out of the station platforms. Then he made a simple and elegant suggestion. Let's he said create a timeline so we can understand where we have come from and where we might be going. This we did literally on the back of an envelope. Once we had identified the key events such as contract signature, planned delivery date, expected delivery date and so on we could understand the problem holistically and attach consequences and actions to each relevant event.

I was reminded of this story and the usefulness of timelines for resolving problems or for developing projects and businesses earlier this week.  I commend their use especially when all else seems to be failing. It's also easy to do and if you want to be a bit more professional when you create a timeline than writing on an envelope you can do this in Word or there are various on line tools available. I have just tried out the free Office Timeline that adds the function into PowerPoint and can recommend this as a good starting point.