Last night, just before dark, they arrived at my house in Essex, Vermont. Raymond and Leah. They delivered two cords of fire wood from their business property in Glover, a distance over back roads of about 70 miles. Now Glover truly qualifies as being in the middle of nowhere, however, I live on a dirt road that isn’t all that easy to find either.

When Leah and I made the arrangements for the firewood, I asked if she needed directions. After all, they had never been here before. But she demurred. “We have GPS,” she said. “Raymond relies on it, so I’m sure we won’t have any difficulties.”

And so, through the help of their GPS device, they arrived. Leah got out of the truck first, introduced herself, and shook my hand. She had a kind face, a quiet confidence about her, and was clearly in charge of the financial aspects of the business—she had a standard invoice form in her hand with the details of our transaction hand printed clearly. Raymond, a tall, slightly gangling man, ebullient by nature with a winning smile, came around the side of the truck and held out his hand. “This is Raymond,” Leah said. We shook hands. Firmly.

“So Raymond,” I asked, “Did you have any trouble finding my house?”

“Oh no,” he said with that Vermont drawl. “My GPS gets me anywhere.” He pulled the device out of his pocket and began showing me how he used it for directions from Glover to my house. The device was well labeled, with a clean interface and clear maps that directed him, without misadventure. Raymond was very proud of this GPS, and his ability to use it.

I thought, “Raymond. Thank a technical communicator.”

For it was a professional technical communicator who designed the interface, the buttons, the labels; who wrote the on-screen wording, the tutorial; who made the device easy to use and valuable to Raymond, and to Leah, while they deliver firewood all over the state of Vermont. And if was a technical communicator who designed and wrote the words on the standard invoice form used for the firewood purchase.

So, during your day, how often do you rely on the services of professional technical communicators? Many, many times. Think for a moment about your day. From the rudimentary (the dials and labeling on your toaster), to the simple (laundering instructions on your business clothes), to the sublime (the dashboard of your car), to the routine (the signage and information boards on your drive and in the subway and airport), to the commonplace (every web site, photo site, and video site you browse), to the complex (the tutorials, instructions, guides, and online help for the hardware and related software you use daily), to the complicated (the buttons and instructions on a digital SLR camera), to the useful (a GPS device). The list is virtually endless.

Take a look around you right now. You encounter many instances of technical communication, constantly, throughout your day. After all, if it isn’t fiction, then it’s nonfiction; in other words, it’s technical communication.

When you find any of these situations difficult or can’t figure out how to use something, realize that it isn’t you. More than likely, the people in charge of these kinds of things didn’t exhibit the foresight to engage professionals. And the results, to be polite, are less than stellar.

On the other hand, when you are able to successfully and easily navigate all of these items and situations, without misadventure, thank professional technical communicators. You can’t live without them.

Some events make it simple to realize that you have achieved a positive gain on time and money. In these cases, the gain has been immediate, clearly recognized, and sometimes even documented for you. Go to a supermarket, buy something on sale, and there is your money savings recorded for you on your receipt. Easy. Take a shortcut on a journey; a simple glance at your watch tells you how much time you have saved. Easy. Post that unused item in the want ads; someone gives you cash for it. Easy.

Comprehending your time and money gain on communication, however, is not so obvious. This is true for a number of reasons. The actual loss of time and money might never have been documented or considered, so there is no basis for evaluation. The time from initiation to implementation for a communication project can be months, sometimes years, and unless time and money are carefully tracked, there can be an enormous disconnection between the before and after.

I like to think about measuring your time and money gain in communication as a journey. Whenever you take a trip—whether it’s a simple jaunt to the supermarket or an extended vacation—you always know where you are starting from and where you are going. It’s the same way with communication: you must know where you are starting from and where you are going.

Before beginning any communication initiative, first take the time to pound a stick into the ground. Where are you now? Identify and quantify that as clearly as possible. Then, identify where you want to go, your destination, your objectives. Use the markers from your starting point. These objectives should also contain your time and money savings, and your making money quantities. In other words, your return on investment.

Now, go on your journey; launch your communication initiative: your marketing campaign, your employee survey, your newly updated web site, your supporting campaign for a new product or service launch. Whatever it is. Then, periodically, throughout the campaign, assess where you are. You can also use these assessments to consider changes in direction that might help you better get you where you want to go. When you finally reach your destination , you’ll know it.

And you’ll know how much time you have saved, how much money you have saved, and, ultimately, how much money you have made. That’s the value of simple, clear communication: it makes you money.

A few weeks ago, I backpacked with my friend Bill. What’s great about going into the wilderness for a few days with Bill (in this case, four days) is that we communicate so well, respect each other’s needs, and consider them throughout the trip. This kind of deep communication becomes especially pointed living in the woods when your kitchen and bedroom are in the pack on your back.

This trip, our goal was to summit four of the forty-six 4,000-foot peaks in New York’s Adirondack park. (Actually, there are only 43 such peaks. Apparently, past climbers couldn’t measure very well, but history dictates compliance with their inaccurate measurements.) Four days, 32 miles, 12,000 feet of elevation gain, fifty-pound packs, all planned with a guide book last published seven years ago—an eon for the Adirondacks where landscape-altering storms are the norm.

While we had a general idea of the summiting trails, we also knew that routes and conditions would be different—in two cases, markedly different as it turned out—from descriptions written at least seven years ago, and probably eight. We knew this going in, and we knew that we would be trying to get the latest conditions, from whoever we crossed paths with, always an eye-opening and trusting endeavor.

Ultimately, we knew this: our ability to ask clear questions, listen attentively, engage in the dialog, focus on outcomes, and accurately assess information would be crucial to the success of our trip. In other words: simple, clear communication. (You knew that was coming, right? If not, look at Solari’s home page.)

So we did this. Whenever we met someone on the trail who was amenable and willing to talk, we engaged them. In return, we gathered a lot of pertinent information (some conflicting that we reconciled by assessing the source). We discovered three significant facts: one trailhead wasn’t where we thought it was; a rumored trailhead relocation was indeed fact and that its trail had been substantially cleared over the previous years; and that one trail was overgrown although still passable.

In the end, we discovered that the information we gathered was accurate on the ground. We did summit all four mountains. And, as a bonus, garnered a couple of sources for summiting future mountains.

Think of how, in a metaphorical sense, these same events happen to you. Think how simple, clear communication could have helped clear your path and enable you to summit your mountain.

Certification creates two enormous benefits for our profession and for practitioners. First, certification establishes a sold foundation for the legitimacy and economic contribution of technical communication. Second, certified practitioners clearly demonstrate their expertise as technical communicators, greatly enhancing their value in the marketplace.

Practitioners become certified in six core competency areas:

• User analysis
• Document design
• Project management
• Authoring (content creation)
• Delivery
• Quality assurance

As a result, employers and clients alike will now have a concrete idea of the expertise, contribution, and value that technical communicators bring to the marketplace. STC is developing a page on its Web site dedicated to promoting certification and explaining the value of certified technical communicators.

On 30 April 2010, the STC Board of Directors accepted a business case from its Certification Task Force. This historic event occurred after 35 years of ongoing and difficult discussion. The Society has embraced the idea of certification for technical communicators, and in the coming months will be developing a certification program.

Certification is based on assessing portfolios and work artifacts, not examinations. (In other words, there are no tests.) This method takes advantage of the existing methodology and infrastructure of both the publications competitions and the Associate Fellow and Fellow process. To implement the program, STC is defining assessment criteria for each of these six competency areas, then recruiting a network of examiners to review applications. In the future, as the Body of Knowledge is fleshed out, STC will assess adding an exam-based assessment as another certification method.

Once conferred, certification is valid for three years. To ensure that competencies are kept relevant, certified professionals must become recertified for another three years. As with many other professions, recertification involves completing and participating in educational and professional activities. STC currently has a number of these opportunities available, and will be creating more in the upcoming year.

Member and non-member certification and recertification fees are still being developed, however, these fees will be comparable to certifications programs of similar associations.

The certification task force will report on its process, progress, and future. You can also expect to hear much more about certification in the coming weeks!

Effective communication is crucial for success in business — that is, attaining results by meeting objectives with and through other people.

Communication is vital to any human encounter.

When you communicate well, you clarify concepts and ideas. You are able to understand and work with the recipients of your message. You will also be able to inform, instruct, and persuade them to do what you want them to do, to achieve your desired results. In fact, the most effective communicators not only influence and persuade their audience to act in a specific way, but also these communicators convince their audience to do so.

Business communication can be full of specialized language, or jargon, that generally can only be understood by experts. Others inside a company and outside of a company do not inherently understand this jargon, even when they hear it all the time or even attempt to use it. Have you ever repeated jargon in a manner so that others might perceive that you understand it when, in reality, you don’t, at least not fully? If so, you are in good company. Most people only understand part of the jargon they use, especially acronyms. Therefore, it is incumbent on you to state things as simply as possible and to provide explanations and descriptions whenever possible so that everyone, the experts, the so-called experts, and those on the fringes, truly can comprehend your message.

Peter Drucker (in “How to Be an Employee” published in Fortune magazine in 1952) writes, “Your effectiveness depends on your ability to reach others through the spoken or the written word.” Study after study shows that managers and C-level executives spend between 78 and 87 percent of their time communicating. Since you spend some much time in this activity, doesn’t it make sense to be expert at it?

Since we communicate every day all the time, we might think that communication is simple. It is not. While much communication is based on common sense, that alone does not ensure clear and effective communication. In fact, all communication is flawed at some level. Expert communicators employ a number of techniques including word choice (semantics), appropriate language (linguistics), speaking and writing effectively (rhetoric), people skills (sociology and psychology), presentation skills (graphic design), and a general command to relay messages.

To be effective, business communication must achieve the desired results; in other words, you decide what you want to accomplish as a result of your communication (your objective), and you convince your audience to act in a manner that enables you to attain that objective. Any business communication that does not result in you accomplishing your objective, fails.

—Rich Maggiani

Think of your life-changing moments. Rewarding, aren’t they? I had one in the spring of 1995 when two local technical writers asked me to join them and others to start the Vermont chapter of the Society for Technical Communication—STC. Sounds worthwhile. Sure, I’ll join.

And with that simple decision, I embarked on an incredible journey that has enhanced both my personal and professional life far beyond any heights that I could have imagined. To that, I am indebted to STC and its members.

Renewing my membership. I gain so much as an STC member, learning and applying an abundance of skills over these past fifteen years. My career has been enhanced, and my clients have benefited. Membership has opened new venues for me, some that I couldn’t possibly have envisioned. I simply cannot imagine being a professional technical communicator and not belonging to the one organization that supports and promotes that profession—STC.

This is a simple decision for me. I simply rejoin.

The cost of membership. There has been much debate about the dues for membership including belonging to a chapter and a special interest group (SIG). Is STC really worth the price of admission?

I look at this issue two ways. STC dues are about $5.00 a week, the same as a venti espresso drink. Isn’t membership in your chosen professional organization worth that? Not being a member also has its costs: lost benefits, lost access, lost opportunities, lost revenue. And those losses represent a far greater cost than dues.

Giving and receiving. I have given a lot to STC, volunteering for one position or another for every year I’ve been a member. While that might seem a lot, I have received in return far more. Let me enumerate.

Members. STC members are nothing if not passionate. This tells me a lot about the people who join, get involved, practice their profession, and commiserate with other members. STC members are the real deal. They—we—know our profession benefits others. There isn’t puffery or pounding chests. Just pure competence, integrity, genuineness. Case in point: my three newest clients were all garnered through my association with STC and its members. Billings this year alone will exceed many tens of thousands of dollars, with more next year.

My continued membership keeps me in touch with other members, many of whom are my friends. I continually meet other members. I almost always come away from encounters with members with a profound appreciation for that person.

My local chapter. Don’t ever let it be said that a few dozen people cannot impact the world. They can, and we did. At our meetings, we learn from each other. Our local chapter raised the bar for our profession. Employers and prospects look for and prefer STC credentials. Over the years, my company has received a number of contracts because of our STC membership, totalling well over one million dollars ($1,000,000+) in billable services.

Special Interest Groups (SIGs). Early on, I joined the Consultants and Independent Contractors (CIC) SIG. Later, I also joined the Marketing and Instructional Design SIGs. All three are ready platforms for ideas, assistance, perspective, and simple camaraderie. Through the listservs sustained by STC, I have met and discussed much with members from all over the world. Always a helping hand, from people I respect and trust.

Intercom and Technical Communication. Recently, I was instructing a client on how to create meaningful slides (incorporating graphics and text) for their presentations. They balked. “What’s wrong with bullet lists?” They wanted to know. I pointed to six articles from Technical Communication to support my position with valid research, as well as a number of articles from Intercom. That is the value of STC’s publications.

Friends. “So, why aren’t you playing music anymore?” This question, from a close STC friend, spurred another one of those life-changing moments. I didn’t have a good answer. So I bought a new drum kit and began playing again. That led to the genesis of The Open Jam, which led to the formation of The Rough Drafts (see photo), and a number of gigs at STC annual conferences. This is just one anecdote in a procession of joyous encounters with my many STC friends.

Annual conferences. For a professional technical communicator, there is no other venue for collaboration, commiseration, education, repartee, consideration, reflection, growth, interaction, wonderment, and just plain excitement than STC’s annual conferences.

Professionalism. In 2008, I became an STC Fellow. I had been striving for that goal since first becoming a member.

While I am quite proud of my accomplishment, it’s more than just an award. What is most important is the professional that I have become because of that quest, how I am able to apply my expertise, how I have been remunerated, and the contacts I have made along the way.

Over the years, STC has provided the framework for my professional growth. My current level of expertise and professionalism is due in large part to the value of being an STC member.

—Rich Maggiani

As previous entries have discussed, your communication must focus on the needs of your audience (not on you). Understanding your audience and making sure they receive and act on the information in the manner you intended is paramount to effective communication. Toward this end, we continue our discussion of the ten tenets of effective communication, focusing on the last four tenets:

• Correct
• Timely
• Well designed
• And it builds goodwill too

Correct. A correct document complies with the basic rules of writing: grammar, punctuation, mechanics, spelling, word order and usage, and sentence structure. Incorrect writing slows readers and confuses them.

Given too many of these kinds of errors, readers begin to question the validity and accuracy of your writing, and wonder if you were also this careless in researching, analyzing, and presenting your findings. Readers begin to doubt your professionalism, which in turn compromises your arguments, conclusions, and recommendations.

There are dozens of books on the basics of writing. Find one you like, keep it nearby, and refer to it often.

Timely. Few things in life are as useless as information that is no longer beneficial, that is not timely. I once returned home from a cancelled flight to a voice message sent 40 minutes before departure telling me of the cancellation. Not only was this information useless, it proved costly—the airline issued refunds to thousands of passengers on the numerous flights cancelled that day and gave us all vouchers for a free flight.

Another aspect of timeliness: your reader must be able to understand and act as quickly as possible on the information. Your style, organization, and visual design all help toward this goal.

Well designed. An executive chef once said to me, “Food must look and smell good, for it must pass the eyes and nose before it goes into a mouth.” Much the same argument can be made about a written document.

How a document looks speaks loudly about its acceptance because, even before a word is read, you are communicating. Professional looking, well designed documents engender positive impressions and get noticed. Choose fonts wisely, as they evoke different reactions. Just because you can ‘drop shadow’ or ‘outline’ text, don’t do it. And keep to just a few fonts to avoid that busy look. While you want to impress with your document design, keep within acceptable standards.

Build goodwill. We have all read words that touched us, or that repulsed us. In business writing, strive to create a positive reaction. Carefully consider those who comprise your audience, then ‘speak’ to those people when you write. Make that personal connection with your words and you build goodwill, not only for yourself, but for your organization and profession—exactly our goal when we write these position papers for you to read.

The ten tenets. Taken together and diligently applied, these ten tenets ultimately demonstrate respect for your audience. By employing these ten tenets in all your writing, you can create positive relationships, ones that can endure.

—Rich Maggiani

To be most effective, your communication must focus on the needs of your audience. When you write, understand your audience, and make sure they will receive and act on the information in the manner you intended. Toward this end, we continue our discussion of the ten tenets of effective communication, focusing on the next four tenets:

• Accurate
• Comprehensive
• Accessible
• Concise

Accurate. Get your facts straight. Even the slightest inaccuracy subjugates believability and can bring the contents of an entire document into question.

Inaccuracies can annoy and perplex an audience, especially when they know otherwise. And keep your own biases at bay when citing facts; remain objective. Compelling information presented accurately can still raise eyebrows; there is no need to overstate.

An occasional misstated fact can be tolerated, but attention to detail in this all important area is well worth the effort. The little bit of extra research that corrects a distortion goes a long way toward creating authoritative communication.

In a presentation, I once used the quote “Never miss an opportunity to keep your mouth shut”, which had been attributed to author Robert Newton Peck. When I called him to verify this attribution, Mr Peck set the record straight. He told me, “Samuel Johnson said that.”

Accuracy is ethical.

Comprehensive. Thorough communication answers all questions, provides all the necessary information in sufficient detail, and enables your audience to assess and act with confidence.

Oftentimes, being comprehensive means describing background information so that your audience has a foundation on which to consider the heart of your communication. Don’t make assumptions about what an audience knows or about their background. An audience must be able to paint the entire picture of your message, and it’s your job to give them the tools to paint that picture. A complete, self-contained explanation and discussion enables your audience to proceed safely, to be efficient with their time, and effective with their efforts.

History also benefits from comprehensiveness. Consider how important detailed minutes from crucial meetings can be, especially minutes from Board of Directors’ meetings.

Accessible. There is just too much to read—emails, memos, reports, blogs, web links, articles, magazines, books—it can all be so overwhelming. With this plethora of information, readers skim, diving in only when deemed important, interesting, or useful. Few read sequentially, from beginning to end. Besides, attention spans are short. Make the most of these methods by helping your reader easily access what you say in your writing.

Unless a simple word or two will suffice, write descriptive titles and headings using phrases or sentences. This separates your document into small, independent sections that are easily digestible. A reader should be able to skim your headings and get the essence of a document.

For longer documents, don’t force your reader to flip or scroll unnecessarily—create a table of contents or summary links at the beginning. Avoid useless links as well.

Concise. What we choose to do with our time is the essence of who we are. We are all busy. With the myriad possibilities, choosing what we do with our time can be a significant challenge.

So, to help a reader select your document to read, it must be concise and to the point. Tell people up front what they are about to read and how they can benefit. For example, this position paper adheres to this tenet in its two-line heading.

Write simply. Convey a lot of information economically. Excise unnecessary phrases. Replace wordiness with short words. Eliminate tangential information. Use simple grammatical forms. A good edit shortens a document by up to 20 percent: 1,000 words down to 800.

Mark Twain once apologized for the length of a letter saying he hadn’t taken the time to edit it. Learn from him—edit. Take time so that your reader doesn’t have to.

(See part three for the last four tenets.)

—Rich Maggiani

Effective communication is about connecting with your audience. It’s about your audience getting your message as you intended. It begins with understanding who your audience is and how they can best ‘hear’ your message, then using this information to craft and deliver your message. This is simply another way of saying that your message, whether written, verbal, or visual, must be audience-centered—focused around the needs of your audience. Put yet another way, communication is less about you and all about them.

Effective communication is simple and clear, focuses around a single idea, and ultimately achieves the results you desire.

To be most effective, your communication must adhere to these ten tenets. Effective communication is:

• Honest,
• Clear,
• Accurate,
• Comprehensive,
• Accessible,
• Concise,
• Correct,
• Timely, and
• Well designed.
• It builds goodwill too.

Let’s start with a discussion of the first two and then continue with the remaining eight over my next two blog entries.

Honest. The rock-bottom, most steadfast principle of any communication is honesty. Honesty builds rapport with your audience, and in this age of social media, a strong rapport is vital to success.

Anything short of the truth can cause adverse consequences for both you and your audience. In extreme cases, not telling the entire truth can cause physical harm. Once your audience sees that you are shaving off parts of the truth, not telling the entire story, or worse, distorting the message with misinformation, your communication is doomed.

Blurring the truth of bad news is all too common. In the face of unsettling news, honesty can be disarming simply because it is unexpected.

Any kind of misinformation causes your audience to not only question the validity of your present message, but also your past and future messages. Misleading your audience can cause faulty decision making (such as investing when divesting is more judicious). Dishonest information can easily result in litigation and costly settlements.

These repercussions are some of the many reasons why you must maintain the highest level of integrity in all your communication. But there is a positive reason as well:

Being honest is the right thing to do.

Clear. Clarity enables your audience to get your message as you intended. And isn’t that the whole point.

Instructions especially benefit from clarity. Who among us hasn’t struggled through frustrating assembly instructions, or the less-than-accurate steps for using software features? And yet it’s this lack of clarity that increases traffic to a company’s technical support lines with the corresponding increase in costs.

Clarity is greatly enhanced when communication focuses on a single meaning and message. Clear communication means your audience doesn’t have to guess or fill in the blanks or even ponder your meaning.

(See parts two and three for the last eight tenets.)

—Rich Maggiani

Poor communication costs business millions of dollars every single day. Most executives and managers understand this, yet they don’t realize how big a part they play in this miscommunication.

Financial statements do not carry a line item for poor communication, although they should since, with a little effort, it can quickly be quantified.

Communication is vital to the success of your organization. To be most effective, communication must circulate and reach all levels, not just the core.

Different forms of poor communication. Here are but a few:

• Long, unproductive, numbing meetings without a clear purpose or agenda, often reaching no conclusions, result in lost productivity as well as the collective time of everyone attending.
• Poor documentation neglects to mention the purpose of the software or hardware and only explains how it works. Users, however, don’t care how it works; they want to know how to use it!
• Uninspired selling skills and anemic sales presentations showing no interest or understanding of a prospect’s needs, result in missed opportunities and lost sales.

• Rambling, cryptic, and incoherent emails that are misunderstood or ignored, result in wasted time. Often (up to 50% of the time) an email’s tenor is incorrectly perceived, simply because body language cannot be analyzed and tone of voice not perceived; this results in hurt feelings, ill will, and inaction.
• Distracted managers who simply do not or cannot truly listen alienate staff and lower morale. Staff members who realize they are not being listened to and simply patronized, themselves stop communicating.
• Staff members from different generations or gender lack a basic understanding of each other, their communication styles, and preferences. Incomprehensible and inappropriate statements are commonplace. Baby boomers (thinking it’s still the ’70s) and today’s generation (who were not even alive then) simply do not share the same communication foundation.

Poor communication squanders time, wastes effort, erodes loyalty, and loses business.

Squandering time. Poor communication simply takes longer to process and understand, if understanding can be attained. Unnecessary questions are asked, discussions are needlessly lengthy, the communication is recreated, only to be foisted again on a wary audience.

Here’s an example of an email received by a colleague: “The company may need the more accurate methodology since it’s the standard approach employed of the more approximate method that may result in an estimate that underestimates and not on-target estimates.” After a lengthy conversation with the sender, my colleague’s client rewrote the email. Final squandered time for one email: six hours.

Wasting effort. My bank’s CEO recently sent every customer a letter explaining the bank’s checking account overdraft policy: five dense paragraphs. The policy was more onerous than the current overdraft protection plan. Many customers didn’t appreciate the change and called to protest, inundating the bank. The customer service representatives explained why the letter was misleading and inaccurate. As a result, the CEO planned to rewrite and resend the letter. The CEO’s effort fell prey to the 30% of business letters that initially fail.

Eroding loyalty. According to an Accenture study, American consumers returned $13.8 billion in electronics in 2007; Europeans returned $11.5. That’s over $25 billion. Between 60%–85% had nothing wrong; that’s between $15.2 and $21.5 billion in perfectly functional equipment returned. Why? Confusing interfaces, features difficult to access, no customer education, weak documentation were overriding factors—all issues that superb communication could solve. $25 billion! That’s a lot of lost loyalty.

Losing business. The presentation was wonderful, beautiful slides, expertly delivered—all about the expertise of the company who was leading the proposal. Unfortunately, the state agency wanted to know how the company would solve the agency’s problem and support their budget. Instead, the agency got egotistical fluff. The agency, rightly, awarded the contract to another firm; the company came in “second”.

How big a cost? Poor communication cost Merck $253 million after losing their Vioxx trial. Why? The jury was befuddled by Merck’s scientific explanations.

Positive results. Thoughtful, effective communication delivers unparalleled benefits to both you and your audience. Effective communication reaps positive results: increased market valuation and stockholder value; greater employee commitment, involvement, retention, and morale; and stronger customer loyalty. All of which saves you—and makes you—money.

How much is poor communication costing you?

—Rich Maggiani