Welcome to Alex’s Agenda, the new weekly column from the front-lines of the future by The Memo’s Editor in Chief, Alex Wood.
Sorry to disturb you but…
I’m no expert…
Could I just have a moment of your time…
It’s a well-documented problem. We’re terrible at saying what we want. Getting to the point. Dancing round the issue.
Jokes aside, it stops us Brits from getting ahead. Millions of dollars of missed opportunities because we sell ourselves short.
Americans know how to hustle, at a moment’s notice. When I was in New York I experienced the difference first hand while filming a documentary about British startups making it in the Big Apple. At every opportunity founders threw themselves at me, confidently pitching ‘the next Uber of…’ without the self deprecating expressions you hear so often in London.
The solution
Over Christmas I was delighted to discover a new tool for our British shortcomings, when it comes to email.
“Just Not Sorry”, is a free plugin for Gmail that promises ‘warn you when you write emails using words which undermine your message’. In other words, it helps you to get to the bloody point.
Clik here to view.
This brilliant plugin scanned my woeful words and called out my classic “sorry but” and “I’m not an expert” underlined in red. As I hovered my mouse over, it even offered an explanation for why my words carried so little weight:
“I’m not expert” undermines your idea and displays an overall lack of self-confidence
Helping women find their voice?
Tens of thousands have downloaded it and taken a virtual pledge to be more assertive in 2016. But the people behind this stroke of genius didn’t have Brits in mind when they coded it. Its creators wanted to help women in technology who they believe struggle to be assertive in business situations.
Despite their best intentions, reaction has been mixed. Gadgette, our sister publication, panned it for its reinforcement of the view that a man’s way of doing business (being assertive, bordering on hostile) is the right way to do business.
The creators have missed a trick. In the UK there are millions who struggle to get their point across, regardless of gender. We’re drowning in email, none of us are finding our inboxes any easier to manage and we need all the help we can get.
If this simple plugin lives up to its promises, it’ll batter out a bit of Britishness we could all do without. Sorry not sorry.
More from Alex’s Agenda
Our NHS can’t afford to be crippled by bad technology
Why cats hate the Internet of Things
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