Jon Moon

Clarity and Impact

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My articles - 2010 & before

I wrote these for emails, press, clients and my books.

On clarity

"Desperately seeking clarity" (2 pages, 2009) - how the credit crunch has shown we must put clarity in the exam room and Board room.

Tips and thoughts on graphs, tables, bullets

"Time to ban the bullet" (1 page, 2010)
"Graphs: weapons of mass distraction" (1 page, 2010)
"Do tables people love, not loathe" (1 page, 2010)

'Visuals: powerful or pointless' - three short articles

An oft-quoted mantra is: 'we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, 50% of what we see and hear (are you still with me?), 70% of what we discuss, and 80% of what we experience'. Sounds good, huh - even a slide-pimpers’ dream.

My series of one-page articles debunks these stats - and debunks other conventional wisdom on 'visuals'. 

Part 1: debunking three popular myths on visuals
Part 2: debunking the fourth - and biggest - myth
Part 3: four questions to ask before doing visuals

Also, if you pimp work with colourful autoshapes (overlapping circles, chevrons, circles-of-life, etc), here are two great articles that mock them wonderfully and mercilessly. The first is by Matthew Parris, the UK journalist. The second is from the Harvard Business Review.

 

Various

"Surplus to requirements" (2 pages, 2009) - should Universities make a surplus, and if so, how much? If you know anyone that uses the phrase "investing for the future", maybe forward it to them, they might like the bit that starts on the bottom of page 1... (PS I wrote the article for the British University Finance Directors' Group.)

"Spot the spin" (1 page, 2010) - how politicians spin statistics, plus two games to help your survive election campaigns: "Ballot Box Bingo" and "Stato Bingo". Click here for a little more on this.

"When good information goes bad" (2 page, 2006) - this is an article on clarity in general and is a bit of a period piece. I wrote it a few years ago for "Accountancy", the trade Journal for accountants.