Starting afresh as an antidote to complexity

Here's an extract from Lynda's speech at  the Plain English Awards ceremony on 3 December. Many of you wanted the details of the book she referred to in her speech, so we've included them at the bottom of this post.

"We’ve being reading a brilliant book lately called Simple — Conquering the crisis of complexity, by ‘simplicity warriors’ Alan Siegel and Irene Etzkorn.

Simple addresses the question of why we tolerate complexity in our lives and offers the concept of ‘breakthrough simplicity’ (starting afresh) as the antidote. The book is about:

• how complexity is costing us money, undermining government and business, and putting our health and even our lives at risk.  (The book is full of stories and facts and figures.)

• how people are overwhelmed by quantity and complexity and are looking for a ‘back to basics’ approach as a way to simplify their own lives

• how organisations can use the concept of simplicity (especially in documents) to revolutionise the way they operate and achieve their purpose.  

Simple is also about focusing on simplicity as a bottom-line business issue. It’s about simplifying products, services, and communications to improve relationship with customers and stakeholders, and about being more productive and saving time and money.

Much as I loved Simple, it told me (in very inspiring ways) what I already knew from our work over 23 years, and by the stories we know from the organisations we work with.

We’re also writing a book (called Rewrite) that captures the stories of mostly New Zealand organisations that are fighting the complexity battle. For one section of the book, we asked organisations we have worked with what their motive was for starting afresh (to find breakthrough simplicity) and investing heavily in plain language. You’ll find their stories inspiring too."

Read more about Rewrite and pre-order a copy

Buy Simple here

Congratulations to all the winners!

Congratulations to all winners in the 2012 Awards! Winners were announced last night at a ceremony hosted by Kiwibank and attended by all finalists and guests.

Highlights of the evening were the Cancer Society's win of the premier award for Best Organisation and MSD and IR's excitement at winning the new 'Turnaround' award.

And everyone was impressed that Nova Energy fronted up to collect the Brainstrain bin.
They got the warmest applause of the evening!

See all results and read the media release.

Time for the ClearMark Awards

Last week Washington DC saw a feast of plain language activity. As well as the Clarity conference, it was time for the ClearMark Awards, the United States plain language awards that are modelled on New Zealand's WriteMark Plain English Awards. The US-New Zealand links don't end there. This year three of the judges were from New Zealand -- Lynda Harris, Richard Bland, and Melua Watson all provided expertise on the international judging panels.


This year's Grand Prize Winner was a brochure about the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) -- the largest nationally representative assessment of what students in the United States know and can do.


So as you think about your entry for this year's WriteMark Awards, take a look at what's happening overseas.

Find out more about the Award winners

Read about the ClearMark judges here

Read all about it -- Awards winners and finalists announced

Congratulations to the winners and finalists in the WriteMark New Zealand Plain English Awards!

Read about the winners and finalists

See the full list of winners and finalists

Enter your winning plain English or 'brainstrain' document today

Friday of this week is the closing date for entries to the Plain English Awards.

It's not too late to enter - there are 15 awards in seven categories. Category 7 is People's Choice, with awards for best plain English document, best plain English website, 'brainstrain' document, and 'brainstrain' website.

Why not enter your favourite document or website - or the document or website that does your head in (or all four)?

Or try your hand at the Best Plain English Sentence Transformation (Category 4), for an amazing prize.

The Awards website has details of how to enter, and of the awards in the other five categories (Plain English Champion, Best Plain English Document, Best Plain English Website,  Best Plain English Technical Communicator, Best Plain English Financial Document).

US ClearMark Award winners announced

The winners of the US 2011 ClearMark Awards are on the Centre for Plain Language website.

Have a look at the before and after views of the Grand Prize Winner documents, submitted by the US Internal Revenue Service — who said tax was hard?

Lynda was one of the judges for this year’s Awards. She says it was a great opportunity to work with the international plain English community, and also to see how the US federal services are responding to their new Plain English legislation. The ClearMark Awards were inspired by the New Zealand’s WriteMark Awards. We were thrilled to hear that.