Writing That Works, 3e_ How to Communicate Effectively in Business - Kenneth Roman [11]
Bad news is not made better by being baffling as well as unwelcome. When you spit it out in plain English, readers still may not like it. But their displeasure won’t be compounded by the suspicion that you’re trying to slip one past them.
Consider the surprising bestselling business book Who Moved My Cheese? — an allegory about change by Spencer Johnson. It’s a simple, almost corny, story about two small mice and two small humans who live in a maze where they find cheese, and how they respond when one day their cheese isn’t where it used to be. Its appeal, says Fortune, is both its message — prepare for change, accept it, enjoy it — and its telling, in simple language.
Fortune cites a book on strategy by four management consultants:
In the specialist model, a company competes across geography by leveraging specialization advantages and intangible scale effects (i.e., leveraging the fixed costs of building intangible assets).
It compares that sentence with this one from Who Moved My Cheese? — making almost the same point.
Every day the mice and the littlepeople spent time in the maze looking for their own special cheese.
We’re obviously not doing justice either to the consultants’ text or the Cheese book, but the latter has really struck a chord in business circles. CEOs of important companies are buying and distributing thousands of copies. Why? It makes an important point — and does so in words that communicate. The author, says Harvard Business School professor John Kotter, “has written something that might actually influence people.”
You might call that writing that works.
HOW’S YOUR STATUS ON AMBULATION?
And Other Things People Actually Say
A doctor asked a patient on the phone, “How’s your status on ambulation?” What he wanted to know was, “Can you walk well enough to come to the office?”
Here are more examples, heard with our own ears, of people talking the way pretentious writers write. (This is not what we mean when we say, “Write the way you talk.”)
Weather forecasters who say tornadic activity instead of tornadoes, snow events instead of snowstorms. On international flights, pilots ask passengers to extinguish all smoking materials instead of to put out their cigarettes. A pilot who said, “We’re only five minutes late; considering the weather, I think that’s exemplatory [sic]” instead of pretty good.
Here’s a sampling of what we hear in business — over and over.
Resource constrained instead of not enough people to do the job. Bake in the numbers instead of include. In the August timeframe instead of August. Tasked by the organization instead of assigned. The optics of the plan instead of how the plan will look. Double-click the point instead of emphasize. Drill down instead of analyze. Scope this out instead of check further. On a go-forward basis instead of in the future. Operationalized its goal, instead of achieved. Aggressively ramp headcount instead of hiring a lot of people.
Or bandwidth — as in I don’t have the bandwidth (time) for that meeting or He doesn’t have the bandwidth (ability) for the job.
Or this mouthful (we don’t make these up): The near-term cost of staying in the business plus the opportunity cost of suboptimal resource allocation, instead of The cost of staying in the business plus the cost of tying up money we might better spend elsewhere.
This style of talk is generally heard among middle managers. It seldom comes from the CEO, who, having risen to the top, is less interested in impressing people than in clear communications — and getting things done.
Some terms that jarred originally have come through relentless usage to be accepted as more precise than their substitutes. Delta from forecast, instead of change from what we predicted; What are the metrics? instead of How will we measure this? This is a gray area. Just ask