Writing good morning at the start of an emai seems a good idea. The words sound friendly and upbeat.

It’s not as good as kia ora.

You don’t know for sure when your message will arrive at the other end. Nor do you know when the reader opens it. There’s a good chance it won’t be in the morning.

At best good morning when it isn’t morning doesn’t make sense. At worst, it looks rude. It says the writer hasn’t thought about the person at the other end.

This matters if you are in business. An out-of-place good morning might be interpreted as “I’m happy to take your money, but I’m too lazy to think about how you might read my email”.

Writers have no control over when people read their emails, so it is best not to start communications that way even when you’re in the same time zone as the reader. And if you are not in the same time zone, it only serves to underline the fact.

Assumptions

Good morning makes an assumption. If it’s the wrong assumption it can come across as arrogant.

If you want to seem polite or friendly, just start the email with hi or hello followed by the person’s name. Use the first name if you know them. Use the first and second name if you don’t or if you are uncertain.

Nothing signals the person at the other end is not paying attention more than getting this wrong. If I get an email that starts “Hello Bennett”, I know something odd is going on.

Kia ora

New Zealanders have two better options.

Kia ora is a Māori language – we call it te reo – phrase everyone should know. Strictly speaking it means “good health” but it is widely used as an alternative to “hi”. Kia ora is a great way to start an email.

The other possibility is g’day – a term we share with Australia. It’s seen as a little old-fashioned these days, but serviceable. Hi, kia ora and g’day have the advantage of working at any time of the day or night. They don’t make presumptions about what is going on at the other end of the communication.

Both will set you apart from locals when you communicate with people in other parts of the world. It is is the best ice-breaker.

Good morning, g’day, kia ora, how are you? was originally posted on July 13, 2010 at billbennett.co.nz.

When Frederick Taylor wrote The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911, it made sense. That was a different time, a different era. It does not make sense for knowledge work.

Frederick Taylor thought management could be rationalised. To get there he invented the time and motion study. He taught managers to develop clear and repeatable workflow processes. He saw industrial era workers as machines.

You can probably already see where this is going with today’s excitement about AI, but read on.

It took a while, but Taylor’s ideas were picked up by people like Henry Ford. Industries were revolutionised and fortunes were made.

How the war was won

Scientific management helped the west win a world war and continued as a powerful influence well into the 1970s and 1980s. It lives on today in industrial workplaces.

Maybe it still has a place in factories and sweat shops. Yet, as Helen Whitehead from the Reach Further website explains, it certainly doesn’t have a place in the knowledge economy.

You can’t hurry or streamline true knowledge work in the same way you can automate car manufacturing. This hasn’t stopped managers from trying.

Dehumanising

Whitehead’s story mentions dehumanising digital surveillance technologies like keystroke logging and email monitoring as examples of digital taylorism. They are all nasty and ultimately counter-productive.

What often looks like slacking; those long conversations in the tea room, café meetings and even leaving the office early for drinks with colleagues and customers can be as productive as slaving over a hot computer.

Building relations, shooting the breeze and exchanging ideas are often important aspects of creative knowledge work. And the best knowledge work is creative.

On a side note, it’s rich for an employer who expects staff to work unpaid overtime, accept business calls and deal with email at all hours of the day and night to object to personal phone calls. Make that rich and counter-productive.

Misapplying AI

Artificial intelligence has its place in the modern workforce. There are tasks it can do better than humans. Some results are impressive. You can apply it to many types of knowledge work.

Yet too many managers, raised on Taylorism, and its digitally fuelled descendent philosophies, see it as an opportunity to double down on dehumanising the workplace. Which misses the point.

Take AI chat-bots. They appear to be revolutionary, in fact they are little more than a refinement of a more than a decade-old technology. Yes, AI-powered chat-bots can answer many more questions, but the key difference between today’s AI chat-bots and their less intelligent ancestors is the modern ones are more likely to serve up incorrect answers.

If history teaches us anything about technology and productivity, the human part of the equation is the difficult bit. AI is here. It is already disrupting entire sectors, but the biggest winners will not be the managers and businesses who view AI through Frederick Taylor’s lens.

Originally published on billbennett.co.nz in 2009, updated to include AI in 2024.

Originally published at billbennett.co.nz on Oct 14, 2008.

If Niccolo Machiavelli was alive today he might have written: “What they don’t teach you at renaissance prince college”.

Or he may have gone for the easy dollar and written “How to be a complete bastard”. Perhaps he might have opted for “Seven secrets of highly effective courtiers”.

Machiavelli lived 500 years ago. For renaissance writers, the only market that mattered was the rich and powerful. Even so, any of those above modern-sounding titles might do for his best-known work, “The Prince”.

The Bill Gates of Machiavelli’s day was a renaissance prince (strictly speaking he was a duke but that’s splitting hairs) called Lorenzo Medici.

Medici had just taken over as ruler of Florence after a period when the city-state had operated as a republic. Lorenzo Medici was rich and well-connected. His uncle was Pope in an era when the Vatican controlled most of the known world.

Self-help book for renaissance leaders

Machiavelli wrote several books, but the best remembered was his self-help book for renaissance leaders. In many respects “The Prince” was the first modern management textbook. It’s as fresh and as relevant today as it was in the 1600s.

Some think the first management title was Sun Tzu’s “The Ancient Art of War”. But, a book written two or three millennia ago hardly qualifies as modern. Sun Tzu’s advice is more overtly aimed at military leadership than Machiavelli’s. The militaristic management style is much associated with the old economy where managers strutted around commanding people.

The important point about The Prince is Machiavelli was conscious of the delicate politics of 16th Century Florence. As he pointed out, it didn’t matter that Medici had a powerful military grip on Florence, Medici needed to keep the nobles onside so he could call on their help – either to get things done or in times of emergency.

Like a modern CEO

In other words, Medici was in the same position as the CEO of a knowledge-based company. He had power, but not absolute power. He depended on the skills and resources of others for his own security.

In modern language, he had stakeholders to satisfy.

The Prince remains relevant to our modern, knowledge-based economy.

Let’s look at how some examples from The Prince apply to the Knowledge Economy:

Ruthless revenge.

Machiavelli recommends leaders either indulge individuals or destroy them. He says that because people are able to get revenge for small injuries done to them, you are left with no choice by to demolish any challenger immediately you cross swords.

Anything less than total domination means they can and will get their own back. To see how ruthlessness works in practice think of how Microsoft operated in the software market.

Republics are troublesome

Machiavelli said republics; particularly former republics, are difficult to control. He said you have two strategy options: destroy them or live there in person.

Machiavelli said that people who have lived in republics are dangerous because they can remember what liberty feels like. Replace the idea of a republic with a freewheeling, democratic company recently taken over by a rival and you’ll see how this applies to Knowledge Workers.

Outsourcing. Machiavelli talked about mercenary soldiers, but his words might apply to contractors; “Their allegiance is fickle, their own self-preservation precedes the cause of their employers and it is in their interests to extend a war and not to end it.”

Cynical?

Machiavelli’s name has become a byword for a cynical and treacherous style of carrying on.

Yet some scholars think he didn’t advocate this kind of behaviour; he was merely documenting the unvarnished truth about what was necessary for success.

Machiavelli’s honesty makes the book astonishing. Although the old-fashioned language can be tiresome, there are good translations which make for a rattling good read.

Some advice: Go and read this book before your rivals, and, more frighteningly, your colleagues do.

Originally published on billbennett.co.nz in 2009, updated 2025

British author and leadership teacher John Adair says half a group’s effectiveness depends on the individuals in the group. The other half on the quality of the group’s leadership. So the key to success is to find a decent leader. That’s not easy; because as Adair also says there’s no such thing as a born leader.

Fortunately, leadership can be learnt.

To help Adair developed what he calls his three circles or action-centered model to look at what makes an effectively leader.

More than knowledge

He says, “There’s more to leadership than technical or professional knowledge as many a manager has had to discover the hard way. So the third approach, the one most associated with my name, is the functional approach. But there are these three overlapping areas of leadership responsibility – to help a group to achieve its task, to build it as a team and to develop and motivate the individuals.”

These overlapping areas are: the task, the collective group need and the needs of each individual group member. Adair says they are closely linked. They interact, often overlap and can conflict with each other.

Knowledge workers are often fully autonomous, highly motivated and self-starting. When we have to work on our own, we can usually do so without any problem. In fact, many knowledge workers prefer to work alone as they fear they cannot fully rely on others to pull their weight.

Yet the realities of the modern workplace dictate we often have to work in groups. Groups come together when there is a task to perform that cannot effectively be carried out by a single person working alone. This task is central to the formation of any group.

For a group of people to function as an effective unit there needs to be some kind of group cohesiveness. This can be informal or formal, but defining and maintaining the glue between people in a group is an important leadership function.

When individuals come together in a group, each one brings his or her own set of needs. These include physical and psychological needs – group members need to feel comfortable, be adequately rewarded and recognized for their contribution to the whole.

Leadership role

Adair says that in any functioning group there has to be someone in a distinctive leadership role. This person need not be the same person as the group’s manager. In fact, many experts argue that it is best if the group leader is not the group’s manager.

There are clear lines of demarcation between the work of the group and the activities of a group’s leader. Group members concern themselves with the function parts of fulfilling the core task while leaders need to concentrate on two additional sets of activities: the group’s tasks and the processes that take place within the group.

A leader’s role in the group task is to see that group members are working towards achieving the goal. There’s nothing to stop a leader from contributing personally towards this work. In fact, the best leaders do contribute – it’s known as leading by example. But if the leader ends up doing all, or even the bulk, of the work they will have failed as a leader. And there’s a good chance the project will fail – the reason for forming a group in the first place was recognition that the task involves too much work for any individual.

Group process activities are those tasks, which ensure the group remains in an effective state to continue working towards the core goal. The leaders job is to ensure the group stays cohesive, motivated and focused. He or she also needs to ensure that each individual is working towards the common goal and not wandering off at a tangent or shirking their responsibilities to the others.

Effective leaders

Effective leaders need to concern themselves with both task AND process. It’s no good if the task is completed, but the group is burnt out. Most work groups need to remain intact for further tasks.

Leaders who focus too much on driving the core task forward at the expanse of group dynamics face objections, mutiny or worse. Group members will object and resent such people. You can expect low moral, resentment, withdrawal and friction. This undermines the group, puts the project in danger and destroys the person’s leadership credibility. On the other hand, overemphasis on the group dynamics may be good for all those touchy-feely things modern management gurus love, but can lead to inadequate performance on the core task.

Adair says the best leaders need to juggle these two elements while recognising they are mutually incompatible.

How does Adair’s model apply to the 2025 modern workplace?

Although John Adair developed this model decades ago, its functional approach to leadership remains profoundly relevant, perhaps even more so, in today’s distributed and fast-moving world.

The core challenge for leaders has shifted from managing a co-located team to managing a dispersed workforce that can include remote workers.

Here is how the three circles apply in 2026:

Task: The fundamental task remains the goal, but the tools have changed. A modern leader must ensure the task is clearly defined across digital platforms, that the right SaaS tools are available (project management, communication, version control) and that the team has the autonomy to execute without constant check-ins. The focus is less on supervision and more on alignment and removing digital roadblocks.

**Team: **Team cohesion used to happen naturally in the old style workplace tea room. Today, the leader must intentionally build the team through scheduled, structured activities. This means mastering “digital communication rhythm” and knowing when to use asynchronous tools (email, group chat tools like Slack) versus synchronous tools (video calls) to foster connection. Furthermore, a modern leader is responsible for ensuring the team maintains a high level of digital psychological safety—where members feel safe enough to ask questions and challenge ideas, regardless of the screen separating them.

Individual: In 2009, individual needs often centred on training and recognition. Today, this circle is dominated by flexibility and well-being. A leader’s job is to recognise and manage burnout caused by “always-on” culture. This involves respecting boundaries, supporting flexible schedules, and recognizing that individual motivation is tied not just to compensation, but to purpose, mastery and autonomy.

The central thesis of Adair’s model—that a leader must juggle these three, often conflicting, priorities—is the perfect prescription for navigating the complexity of leading in the post-pandemic digital economy.

Have updated the About page on my news focused website:

billbennett.co.nz/about/

Today is exactly 45 years since I started my first full-time job as a journalist.

I did some earlier, paid casual work for the Manchester Evening News, a start-up called City Life, was two years on the Manchester University student union’s Mancunian newspaper and wrote news stories for the National Union of Student’s National Student newspaper.

On Monday January 5 1981, I reported for duty as the staff writer on Practical Computing magazine at Business Press International at Quadrant House in Sutton, Surrey. At the time it was unusual for someone with a science degree to get a journalism job… but at Practical Computing, that background was seen as an asset.

My long essay on the state of technology at the end of 2025 probably got lost in the run up to Christmas. So here it is again… think of it as setting the agenda for 2026.

billbennett.co.nz/tech-stat…

Last week I wrote this long essay about the state of the tech sector… there are a couple of NZ angles, but it’s still a good read for anyone.

Your feedback is welcome.

If you’ve got some time to spare find it here

billbennett.co.nz/tech-stat…

A handful of technology brands insist their names are written entirely in capital letters. In the past brands like Asus and Gigabyte pushed this idea. Today the Oppo phone brand likes to see its name appear in lights… sorry all capitals. There are other examples.

The jibe about ‘appear in lights’ is no accident. That’s exactly the effect companies who do this want.

Of course companies can write their names however they want

They don’t need to worry about being literate, sensible or easy to read. Although all of those things might help them.

Journalists should not write company names in capital letters. Their goal is to make information easy to understand. This means ignoring demands to spell company names in capitals unless there are good, practical reasons to do otherwise. We’ll look at these in a moment.

Readers come first

Journalists serve readers, not markets nor companies. They do this by making information easy to get and understand. Messing around with capital letters interferes with that.

Capitals are the reading equivalent of speed bumps. They slow a reader’s flow. As you scan a text, your eye stops when it reaches a word spelled out in capitals. They appear in lights.

This is a reason companies want their name spelled that way. It increases the impact of the word. They thing words spelled out in capital letters stand out in text passages. They leap out from a page or screen.

Narcissistic companies

A less charitable interpretation is that spelling a company name in capital letters is a variation of [narcissistic capitals.](https://billbennett.micro.blog/2022/07/28/narcissistic-capitals-companies.html)

Puffed-up fools think capitals makes them look more important. It doesn’t. In fact it can do more harm than good.

Editors who nod through product names in capitals knowingly or unknowingly put brands’ interests ahead of their reader’s interests. There can be commercial pressure to do this, especially from companies that are potential advertisers.

Smart readers will realise this and learn not to trust the publication. For similar reaons, readers are, subconciously, less inclined to trust companies who insist their names are spelled in capitals. This may not be true in other cultures, but in ours, a name spelled all in capitals is a warning.

When company name are capital letters

We pronounce names like HP or IBM as a string of letters. It makes sense to write them as capitals. This doesn’t apply when company names are acronyms forming a pronounceable word.

Acronyms are words formed from a series of initial letters or parts of other words, such as: IBM, BBC, Unesco, WHO, Anzac, laser and radar.

Acronyms can make text simpler, easier to read and understand – life would be harder if you had to write light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation every time you refer to a laser.

Spell an acronym out in full the first time you use it unless you are writing for a specialist audience and the term is instantly familiar.

I prefer to write the full term, followed by the acronym thus: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).

Others like to write the acronym, followed by its full title in brackets. Both are equally correct, it is a matter of editorial style. And there are times when you may want to swap, for example when someone uses an acronym in reported speech.

Confusing acronyms If an acronym is confusing, don’t use it.

Some style guides allow acronyms written with full stops (or periods) between each letter or segment. I don’t. It’s ugly and adds nothing.

Likewise, there are those who think acronyms should always be written in capital letters. Again I disagree. In both cases the result is both inelegant and distracting.

You’ll notice in the examples above, I’ve written some acronyms in capitals, some with an initial capital and some in lower case. Here’s why:

Initialisms When you pronounce the acronym as a string of letters, ie. eye, bee, emm for IBM the computer company, you should write the word in capitals. This type of acronym is an initialism. Linguists and grammar teachers make a distinction between acronyms and initialisms, but journalists generally tend to regard them as the same.

If the acronym is a word and spoken as a word, then treat it as a normal word with an initial capital if it is a proper noun. Otherwise with a lower case initial letter.

Some American newspapers automatically use an initial capital followed by lower case if the acronym had more than six letters. One difficulty is deciding whether to use a or an before an acronym. The important thing is how it sounds when spoken. If the first letter sounds like a vowel, use an.

Certain acronyms were deliberately designed from the outset as pronounceable words. For example, Action on Smoking and Health (Ash). T he Economist Style Guide offers good advice: …try not to repeat the abbreviation too often; so write the agency and not the IAEA, the Union and not the EU, to avoid splattering the page with capital letters. There is no need to give the initials of an organisation if it is not referred to again.

When I trained as a journalist in the 1970s and 80s, old newspaper hands taught me to write using the inverted pyramid.

While it isn’t always the best approach, the inverted pyramid has worked for news writing since the days reporters telegraphed dispatches to editors. Today it works for online writing.

The structure echoes the classic essay structure you were taught — or should have been taught — at school.

The basic format: Introduction — say what the piece is about; answer questions like who, what, where and when. You can also explain why at this point, although that can wait until later.

Then — expand, amplify.

Keep doing this until you’ve told the whole story. Make the most important points first then add more and more detail in each additional paragraph.

Space was limited in the old school print newspapers. So traditional newspaper editors would cut a story from the bottom if it needs to fill a specific space on a printed page.

Inverted pyramid online

The inverted pyramid structure, with each paragraph being progressively less important, means editors can easily remove the least important information first.

A news story written using the inverted pyramid structure can be cut at the end of any paragraph, even the first paragraph, and still be a self-contained story.

Online this means search engines pay more attention to the most important words. This helps people find your writing faster. It means they can zero in on the story and information they are looking for. Those opening paragraphs also make neat summaries for listings and similar online uses.

If you write your copy tight enough, your opening sentence will show up as the text in a Google search. That will help draw in readers.

The most important information goes in the first paragraph and each extra paragraph carries progressively less weight. That’s where the inverted pyramid name comes from: the foundation sits at the top, the less important details are at the bottom.

Using voice to text on the computer because my arm is in a sling. Voice recognition works up to a point, but far from perfect, and the redo-undo-delete function barely ever works which means a lot of the touchpad gestures that I was hoping to avoid.

Suddenly I have RSI like you wouldn’t believe. Much worse than any previous cases. And busy exploring the non-typing options on all my devices. Good news is we are heading into the quiet work period. But I’m going to need medical treatment. And if you read something weird, it’s not my typing.

Up to a point I find it comforting that the AI chatbots sometimes still struggle with te reo (Māori) words, but they appear to be getting much better at New Zealand-style switching between Engilsh and te reo. Spellcheckers and audio AI are way behind.

I’m not convinced the Liquid Glass user interface changes in the new MacOS are an improvement. It’s not bad, just not better than before the update. Likewise I’m not certain Spotlight works better than before. On the other hand, the cross device integration and continuity features are excellent.

Wireless (WiFi) printing has been around for a generation. It’s as unreliable today as it was in the early 2000s. This says everything you need to know about the technology sector.

Enhanced is popular word with public relations and marketing people.

It suggests things are somehow better without offering specifics.

It can mean something is marginally less rubbish or it can mean something wonderful is now even more wonderful.

Usually it is used at the less impressive end of that spectrum.

Paul Bradshaw at the Online Journalism Blog says the BBC gave online journalist three gifts.

He mentions the editors' blogging and the way the BBC opened up its back-end to developers. Both matter.

His first item, the BBC’s web writing style, may prove more important in the long-term.

The organisation’s online news writers write crisp, tight news copy. They get right to the point, line up the important facts, then get out-of-the-way.

BBC learned the hard way

Sharpening skills on Ceefax before the internet, gave the BBC a head start over other written news outlets which had become wordy thanks to larger newspapers.

Bradshaw says: “Even now it is difficult to find an online publisher who writes better for the web.”

The online team is even better at writing news headlines. Its editors compress the gist of an entire story into just five or six words. Most headlines fit inside that Ceefax page width of 40 characters.

Originally posted at billbennett.co.nz on Feb 21, 2011

Big companies worry about communications. They want every word they send out to stay on message. Their goal is to protect or promote brands.

This means a lot of unreadable corporate writing pours out of their headquarters.

Many companies have brand bibles. These are like editorial style guides – they standardise language.

Newspaper style guides are written to make life easier for readers. Brand bibles have other goals. They aim to help the company sell.

Counterproductive

That’s the theory. In practice this is often counterproductive.

Companies love complicated product names, often littered with jarring capital letters in weird places. Some add odd-ball punctuation. You’ll find trade marks and copyright symbols. Some pepper text with stock market abbreviations.

They give everyday nouns capitals. Some insist on spelling entire words in capitals. They use obscure acronyms and far too many adjectives. Often passive voice sauce is ladled over this sickly concoction.

You’ll even see companies refer to themselves and other companies in the plural, not singular. Perhaps they think this makes them sound like a bunch of fun people. In reality it makes them look like amateurs.

Companies often focus on writing about the wrong things, like dull histories. That is another story.

Corporate writing is often hard to read

None of this is easy to read. It doesn’t help the flow of information from one mind to another. Every non-standard affectation is like a roadblock on the highway to understanding.

Readers often switch off. They just don’t care.

And yet companies persist. Why?

They carry on turning out rubbish communications because it is safe. Nobody loses their job if they stick with the brand bible. Managers can tick off boxes all the way up and down the chain of command.

Sign off is guaranteed.

Everyone is happy. Except the poor soul who has to read the awful prose.

You might be interested in Technology writing for beginners. Follow a few simple rules and you’ll be able to write decent, readable articles or stories about technology for any audience without confusing or boring them.

No-one cares when or where your company started.

If you’re writing a website about page, compiling a brochure or preparing a business proposal, don’t fall into the trap of adding a lengthy company history.

It is best to avoid histories altogether. If you must have one, keep it short and either link to the information on another web page or place it at the bottom. If you are working for a client who asks you to include a history, try to talk them out of it.

Whatever you do, don’t start anything written for customers with a history lecture.

Too many about pages begin with words to the effect of: “In 1997, three clever guys had the idea of forming a widget business and set up shop at 101 Boring Street, Dullsville, Arizona”.

Yawn.

Not only does company history bore readers, it sends a message that you are self-obsessed, maybe vain, possibly even narcissistic. This doesn’t help your business.

Worse, Google and other search engines will pick up on this information — particularly if it is near the top of your company about page — and there is a good chance the algorithm will assume your company history is more important than whatever valuable information your potential customers are searching for. This can be disastrous if you started out in one field and now operate in a different one.

Of course this rule doesn’t apply if you are selling history. Say you run a café in a historic building, you offer heritage vegetables or sell food made with your grandmother’s recipe. In that case go for it.

New Zealand government agency websites tend to move content around at least once a year. Along the way a huge amount gets deleted.

I know this because I frequently link to sources from my news site (billbennett.co.nz) and every week I check the links. Most weeks one or two links break. This week more than 40 are broken because of yet another rejig of the Commerce Commission web site. Some are redirected, but can look broken if the redirects are slow or involve multiple steps.

Also this week a major US research company has changed the URLs of all its archive material.

There are ~6000 external links on my site, only 1% broke this week, but if the same number broke every week, the total would halve in a year.

Three years a Sky Sport subscription included the English Premier League AND UEFA Champions League games. The cost of Sky is now 60% higher than in 2022 and 2023 when it was $300, but no longer includes UEFA. To watch the same amount of football as 2023, I now have to pay $620. Over 100% more.

One of my favourite pieces of advice I received when starting out as a young journalist (That was 45 years ago) was “Don’t use old clichés, invent new ones”.

It’s not a profound observation, but in the dozens of press releases I get each day, companies no longer do deals… everything is now called a partnership, even if a company just buys something from another company.

“The longer a company’s code of ethics, the more likely it is run by sleazeballs.”

The No Asshole Rule author Bob Sutton hits the nail on the head again. The quote comes from his post: The Enron Code of Ethics: Something Every Boss Should Read.