Ros Atkins, Journalist and Presenter, BBC

David Leck (DL): Why this book and why now?

Ros Atkins (RA): I wrote the book for a couple of reasons. The main one was that, as our (BBC) ‘Explainer’

videos became more popular, lots of people were asking: ‘How do you go about explaining often complex stories and subjects in relatively short periods of time?’ Often, I would reply I have a system I use to try and communicate effectively, both as a journalist and outside of my work.

When I would mention that people would be often interested. So, I thought, maybe there's something here worth sharing. The second thing is that, as I've gone through my career as a journalist and doing other work, I've started to understand more and more how central effective communication to getting things done in a way that benefits all involved in that process.

I feel passionately that when we all pay attention to communication, it makes a difference to our lives. And so, you put those two things together and I decided to see if I could write a book.

DL: The great skill for which many of us know you is your ability to pack so much information into so little time - and to make someone feel an explanation is being delivered just for them. These seem like hugely important skills for all walks of life especially in business and navigating careers.

RA: I think anytime you're communicating you must be precise about the information you're passing on. If you can be purposeful in your understanding and remain focused on the audience so you tailor that information to work for the people you're trying to communicate with, that's going to make a difference, whether you're going to the doctor, in a negotiation at work, meeting a client, or in my case, explaining a complicated story.

These fundamentals cut across all communication in our working life. I guess the book is my effort to make the case that all those things are worth paying attention to because I would argue investment will pay you back in a range of different ways.

DL: And I think most of us can see that when it doesn't go right, it's just a waste of time, resources and energy?

RA: In the end, communication is about someone or an organisation deciding they have something, some information, they would like to pass on to particular people. We don't communicate in a vacuum. We communicate with particular people in particular circumstances, and the very act of communication is based on our desire to pass on information. It’s paying attention to what precisely we're passing on and how precisely we're passing it on. It might seem obvious to say so but when we pay attention to those two things we're much more likely to achieve the outcome. This, after all, was the reason we started communicating in the first place.

And you're quite right, when we don't pay attention to that we risk putting lots of resources and effort into different types of communication that don't achieve that. It’s reasonable to ask, if you haven't managed to pass the information on, what was the purpose of that piece of communication.

DL: You’ve spoken about the power of informal networks. At the PSMG we often talk about the importance of personal PR and branding and it seems a willingness to invest in our networks must be a part of that?

RA: I'm a huge believer in informal networks. I think that comes through clearly in the book. I believe so passionately in them because I can't do this alone. There are people all around me at the BBC and in my work beyond the BBC, who will both help me improve the work I do and will also give the work I do the best chance having impact. And without their support and input, I'm much less likely to be able to make progress with the ideas I'm trying to get off the ground or the content I'm trying to create.

Talking with as broad a range of people we can about the work we do and the industries in which we work has enormous benefits. I learn from people. They improve my ideas; they change my perspectives. And I'm constantly trying to instigate those conversations not just from a selfish point of view, though, of course, there are huge benefits for me. It’s also because I think if you're part of a larger organisation, those informal networks operate in several different directions.

Of course, some people will come to me and ask for my perspective on something, and I'm very happy to share that. But for me, my ability to communicate and share my ideas with as broad a range of people as possible has a whole raft of benefits. The most important thing is it gives a good idea the best chance of happening. If we work in big organisations, we want our best ideas - whether I've had it or someone else has had it - to have the best chance of flourishing. Informal networks are crucial to the best ideas having the chance.

DL: Our members often work in complex organisations – and are non-lawyers/accountants working with lawyers and accountants. But when it comes to the marriage of ideas with power, surely this can only ever be successful when energies are invested in all those with an input?

RA: I've always been fascinated in how organisations work and how they interact with other individuals or businesses they work with. It seems to me that if you want your work or an idea to be able to flourish and have impact and be beneficial to your business and your clients, you must understand the environment in which it's working.

One example is my explainer videos which we started making in late 2019. I'd spent most of that year studying deeply how video was working in the news media, looking at the work I'd done in the past, which hadn't done as well as I hoped it would do. I was both examining my own work, but then also looking at the broader industry context. I couldn't possibly have done that without speaking to lots of different people in different places within the structures in which I was working.

I've always been a keen student of the environment in which I'm working because I think it allows me to make smarter decisions about the ideas tat, I develop but, also and crucially, how best to give those ideas a chance.

DL: You talk about, early in your career, developing a technique to catch, sort, grade, fillet, pack and deliver information. It seems such a powerful device, especially now when we’re all bombarded with so much information.

RA: The responsibility of communication always lies with the communicator, not the audience. So, if you are pushing too much information towards the people you're hoping to communicate with, and they are quite reasonably feeling overwhelmed or confused, that's your problem.

It is our responsibility as people communicating to sift through the information we want to pass on, to assess what information is most essential to the purpose of our active communication, simplifying it so it's as easy to understand as possible, thinking about what form it should be in (whether it should be an email, a longer report, video or a face-to-face meeting or a PowerPoint). All those decisions will be affected by the people you're trying to communicate with.

And I would argue all hat decision making, all that sifting and distilling and preparing and passing on, it's all our responsibility. And the good news is when we take responsibility the chances of the people we're communicating with engaging with what we're having to say goes up.

I've recently done a BBC Radio 4 series called Communicating. One of the people I interviewed was Michael Johnson, the brilliant broadcaster and Olympian. He talks about how, as a young man starting to work with his coach, starting to get very serious about his athletics, he took responsibility for telling his coach as effectively as he could what he was experiencing, because he understood that for his coach to be effective, he had a part to play in passing on his experience of training.

I love listening to that because it emphasised something I think all the best communicators understand - it's their responsibility to get the information they want to pass on across in the best possible form, to be useful and accessible to whoever they're trying to reach.