Communicado: Business Communications Blog

Yes, you did read that title correctly. And in case you think I've lost my marbles, I promise you I haven't! Ask anyone who has worked with me. If there's some complex document or report writing to be done, my wall gets covered with brightly coloured post-it notes.

'Why?' is a question you may well be asking? In previous posts, I've mentioned some of the benefits of and techniques for writing in a more structured way.

Using post-it notes is really about taking a structured approach to writing to the next level - the document level.

You see, each post-it note I use represents a chunk or module of content. I have a heading for each module written on the post-it note, so I know the approximate content it represents. I also use larger post-it notes to define topics (groups of related modules) and a different size again to define groups of related topics. These bigger sized notes also have headings written on them. I also find it useful to have different coloured post-its for each of these different levels of content.

Perhaps you are beginning to see that this seeming madness isn't quite so mad after all. If you are still bemused, let me explain a bit more. Using post-it notes allows me to experiment with a variety of structures and sequences for my content. I can move them around on my wall and consider several options for the structure and sequence before I've written a word. In other words, I get a birds-eye view of the content and different ways of organising it without being bogged down in the detail.

It's also a great way of getting some instant reviews or feedback from colleagues. Give them a first draft document with a request to review the structure and they have to read the whole thing before they can make an informed judgment. Get them to take a look at your post-it note outline on the spot, talk them through it briefly and they can give you some feedback in a matter of minutes.

Once I'm happy with an outline, I can easily capture the structure in a Word document and start filling in the detail. And I can write the content in any order I like. If I'm waiting for content for particular modules or topics from someone else, I can still go ahead and write the parts of the document where I have content already.

So next time you visit the stationery cupboard choose a few different sized post-it notes in different colours. Your colleagues may raise their eyebrows, but you can be confident you'll be raising your report writing game.

Well, you may have noticed we’ve been absent from publishing in the blogosphere for a couple of months; but not absent from monitoring its goings on.

In case you aren’t aware, my colleague Robert Good has been doing a grand job keeping our Business Communications Hub ticking over in recent weeks.

I was amused by a recent post he linked to commenting on the thoughts of Britain’s luvy-in-chief, Stephen Fry in one of his podcasts.

Apparently, business report writing certainly shouldn’t be focusing on grammar and punctuation; and business writers should be trying to embrace the richness of the English language because, in his view, business writing has squeezed all life out of the language.

Here’s the problem. Stephen is hugely talented, with an Oxbridge education. He’s a man who makes his living out of embracing the richness of the language. He loves the language, is totally confident in his command of it and makes it work beautifully to his advantage.

People with this kind of talent are first, fairly rare and second, prone to forget that not everyone shares their talent for linguistic playfulness and curiosity.

When I was a child my mother always used to tell me to “mind my P’s and Q’s”. I’m still not entirely sure what she meant, but I think it was along the lines of “don’t forget to say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank You’ or you’ll get a clip round the ear”. Certainly, I found out that if I didn’t remember to write a thank you letter to relatives after a birthday, the prospects for a present the following year were severely jeopardised.

Things don’t seem to be quite so straightforward in business writing and sometimes we have quite lengthy discussions about whether it is good practice to say ‘Please’.

Some people are adamant: they never say please in an email or memo, as it simply gets in the way and dilutes the message. Others find this too abrupt; rude, even. These latter folk are the natural people pleasers, who argue that no harm can be done by simple manners. And good manners help to oil the works, don’t they? This can be a tricky debate to resolve, and of course there is no single right answer. Sometimes, it's simply be a matter of personal preference. At other times the company culture dictates your style of writing.

For my money, there is a rule of thumb that might help. I call it the ‘birthday present rule’. Let me explain. Business writing is all about getting your message across clearly and simply. Everybody is busy, and people appreciate receiving communications that are short and to the point. Business writing is not about being nice, it is about being – well, business-like. So I don’t think ‘please’ is essential for everyday communications between colleagues. They already know that you are a nice person – they see or speak to you most days. They will thank you more for being accurate and brief.

However – and here I hope my birthday present analogy will help! – if somebody has gone out of their way to help you, or if you specifically need to maintain good relations with an occasional work associate, then yes, saying please and thank you will undoubtedly help.

Ultimately it's a matter of judgment based on your audience and your message. But I do think that in a business context, clarity is more important than being nice: “P’s and Q’s” can often afford to be the exception rather than the rule. Just don’t tell my mum I said so.

The term blended learning seems to have been around for ever. It's one of those concepts that appears highly attractive and it's something that various  people and organisations have flirted with on and off for a long time, but to me, it never really seems to have taken hold. (By the way, I'd love to be proved wrong on this one - so if you are a person or organisation seriously using blended learning, I'd love to hear about it).

Also, I suspect it's one of those terms  that means different things to different people. For what it's worth, I've always thought of it as a way of bringing together e-learning and classroom training.

Perhaps part of the problem with my version of blended learning is that it aims to bring together two very different approaches to learning. Maybe it's too much to expect people with a definite preference for either e-learning or classroom training to suddenly be okay with learning from both approaches.

One of the many nice things about being a trainer is you get to meet people from different walks of life and different businesses. I see people from across the spectrum  – banks, pharmaceutical and construction companies; from the police and public services; from insurance and technical companies, plus many more besides. Every delegate has a different tale to tell about how they came to be in the room.

Introducing yourself

I don't know about anyone else, but doing presentations over the web is not something I always look forward to.  Of course, I love the benefits, like not having to travel; not having to worry if the room will be right; and, not having to worry about that tea stain I got on my nice white shirt at lunch. But I really hate not seeing the audience, not being able to make eye contact and not getting all the usual visual clues about how the audience is responding.

Clearly, web presentations and teleconferences are here to stay, so here are some ideas to help you prosper in this new virtual environment.

1. Quick up-front interaction
If you are presenting to a small group (say, maximum 6-8), rather than starting with the typical introduction of yourself, make time to talk ever so briefly with each participant. Ask them what they do and what they hope to get out of the presentation.

Well, the Roman Catholic Church has declared it could be bad for your children. London, apparently, is the tweeting capital of the world and the founder of Twitter has been given airtime on BBC’s Newsnight. Social media has very definitely arrived.

With all the brouhaha, it’s easy for businesses and business communicators not already involved in this brave new world to feel the need to jump in the deep end and get socialising.

A couple of questions in discussion forums in the last few days illustrate the point. “What’s the cost of a one-hour crash course in social media?” cries one. “Anyone know how many businesses use social media? Where can I find out?” panics another.

The first question is almost hilarious in its inappropriateness (the approach to and learning about social media being a gradual, organic process of engagement).

I was interested to read the results of a recent survey carried out by GMX into the use of email in the UK workplace.

The headline conclusion was depressingly familiar: over a third of workers have been offended or upset after misinterpreting the tone or language used in emails received from colleagues.

Looking for elearning software or elearning authoring tools can be a pretty time-consuming process. There are many tools out there and nowadays most of them are pretty sophisticated.

Apart from the obvious criteria of budget, it can be hard to know how to choose. Focusing relentlessly on feature comparison of selected tools is not necessarily going to get you anything other than a headache! Let’s be clear, understanding the features and capabilities of the authoring tool you ultimately choose is a very important part of the selection process; but it’s not the only part.

Here are my top 3 tips for avoiding ‘featuritis’. They apply to both businesses and individuals and are particularly pertinent to anyone looking at using elearning software for the first time.

1. Know your developers
I’ve already mentioned that most elearning authoring tools are pretty sophisticated and many offer a very similar feature set. But not all are created equal when it comes to user interface and general ease-of-use.

You could pretty much take any two or three pieces of authoring software with more or less the same features. Yet the experience of  using each of them is likely to be very different.

Why is this important? If your developers are hard-core techies who work out how to use whatever you throw at them, user interface and ease-of-use isn’t a particular issue (although in my experience even hard-core techies appreciate a good user interface). But if you will be using less technically adept developers, a poorly designed piece of development software could dramatically slow development, de-motivate the developers and cost you a good deal of extra time and money in remedial coaching and training.


2. Know your instructional design capabilities
Everyone in the e-learning and training world claims to be an expert in instructional design. Yet if this were true, we’d only ever attend fantastically useful training courses or take brilliantly developed e-learning modules.

The reality is very different. We’ve all been on (or taken) far too many mediocre courses and e-learning modules. So honestly, how good are your instructional design skills? Are you truly original, creative and forward-thinking and, therefore, looking for software that will enable you to push the envelope? Or are you a little unsure of what e-learning development requires and, therefore, need software that can really guide you through the development process with a minimum of fuss?

3. Know your audience
You might laugh when you see this one on the list – isn’t it obvious, I hear you groan. But do you really know them? When it comes to e-learning you can get some pretty weird and unpredictable reactions from audiences.

My tip here is about knowing what your audience will actually respond to. We all talk about making e-learning engaging and interactive. Yet some of the most successful (ie, well-liked and well-used) e-learning modules we’ve created for clients have been really simple and straightforward.

In other words, choosing an authoring tool on the basis of its ability to create whizzy interactivity might be exactly what you don’t need if it doesn’t float your audience’s boat.

Finally, if you’d like a more comprehensive look at some of our other 'featuritis'-free tips, take a look at our downloadable e-book:

http://info.pacificblue.co.uk/e-learning-authoring-software