Plain Language as a Strategic Tool for Leaders
Use clarity to find hidden costs, build trust, and deliver your mission.
This course shows leaders how to read unclear content as a diagnosis, connect plain language to strategy, and build clarity into how their organization works.
Why This Course Matters
When people call to ask what a letter means, the letter is rarely the only problem. Unclear content is often the most visible sign of something deeper: a tangled process, systems that don't talk to each other, or rules no one has revisited in years.
These problems cost time, money, and trust. Only about 3 in 10 Americans trust government communications, while half of government communicators believe they are trusted. One missing comma cost a company $5 million.
Plain language is more than a writing style. It is a leadership tool. When you try to explain a process clearly and find it tangled or outdated, language is telling you where the system needs attention.
This is the course image on learn.plainlii.com. Look for it on your dashboard after you enroll.
What You'll Learn
Through real cases, practical tools, and a capstone project based on your own organization, you will learn how to:
- spot the red flags in content that point to broken workflows, outdated policies, and siloed systems
- connect plain language to your organization's goals at three levels: product, process, and policy
- build clarity into everyday work with a shared 10-step process and a simple review gate
- measure results in terms leaders already track: time, cost, errors, calls, and trust
- keep clarity going with champions, training, style guides, and AI-assisted review with human judgment
The course is grounded in the international plain language standard, ISO 24495-1, and the RAISE™ framework: Relevance, Access, Intelligibility, Suitability, and Efficacy.
You'll finish with a Clarity Diagnostic and Strategy Brief: a 5 to 8 page plan for your organization that you can take straight to your leadership team.
Who This Course Is For
Department heads, managers, and communications and program directors in public agencies, nonprofits, and private organizations. No background in plain language is needed.
The course is self-paced. Plan on about two hours per module, or 12 to 14 hours in total.
Course Syllabus
Course Syllabus Overview
The course follows five moves leaders can use again and again: diagnose, position, build, measure, and sustain. Module 1 sets up the case, and Modules 2 to 6 follow the five moves.
Each module includes short readings, a video, a discussion, a knowledge check, and one section of your capstone brief.
Module 1: Clarity Is a Leadership Issue
Why clarity belongs on the leadership agenda.
- The trust gap and the cost of unclear content
- What plain language is: ISO 24495-1 and ISO 24495-2
- Plain language vs. easy language
- The RAISE™ framework, and why clear is not the same as suitable
- Capstone step 1: Organization profile
Module 2: Diagnose What Unclear Content Reveals
Read content the way a doctor reads symptoms.
- Seven red flags and the root causes behind them
- Four risks leaders carry: hidden costs, equity, policy gaps, and resistance to change
- Cases: a savings plan that cost more than it saved, and a spring cleaning that retired 80% of forms
- Capstone step 2: Red-flag audit
Module 3: Position Clarity in Your Strategy
Connect plain language to the goals you already have.
- Plain language at three levels: product, process, and policy
- Same tool, different drivers: two organizations compared
- From the right to know to the right to understand
- Capstone step 3: Strategy map
Module 4: Build Clarity into How Work Gets Done
Make clarity part of the workflow, not a polish at the end.
- The 10 Steps to Clarity, and what leaders ask at each step
- Clarify first, then adapt: the stepwise approach
- Governance, the review gate, and how much to test
- Capstone step 4: Implementation plan
Module 5: Measure — Prove It and Improve It
Show results your leaders will recognize.
- From benefits to measures, and why a baseline matters
- Evidence from a before-and-after comprehension study
- Early wins and continuous improvement
- Capstone step 5: Measurement plan
Module 6: Sustain — Keep Clarity Going
Turn a project into lasting practice.
- Champions, training, and style guides people actually use
- Adapting an existing editorial guide
- AI-assisted review with human judgment
- The yearly clarity cycle
- Capstone step 6: Sustainability plan
Wrap-up: Your Clarity Diagnostic and Strategy Brief
- Assemble your six sections into one brief for leaders
- Optional 5-minute recorded briefing
- Certificate of completion
Contact us
Reach out, we try to answer all emails within 24 hours on business days.
We will be happy to answer your questions and help you achieve bolder communication results with writing, translation, and elearning!