Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!*

Every once in awhile, I’ll meet someone, have a pleasant conversation with them, and feel like I’ve gained a sense of their personality. And then I’ll get an email from them.

The email sounds stilted, obtuse, cold, and like it was written by their corporate lawyer or the Jubjub bird. It is totally unlike the person I met!

Sigh.

One of the most ferocious and persistent battles writers face when working with or in corporations is the war against gobbledygook, weasel words, and corporate speak.

And as in uffish thought he stood!

Have you ever read a document that contained phrases such as these?

• benchmark world-class deliverables
• unleash global web-readiness
• syndicate world-class vortals
• scale mission-critical markets
• innovate user-centric systems
• deploy holistic ROI

Do you have any idea what’s actually meant?

Be honest! You may think you do but I challenge you to rewrite each of the above into a simple, clear, coherent sentence.

Yeah, I didn’t think you could.

Common buzzwords bandied about in corporate writing include such gems as leverage, process, interactive, solutions, empowerment, ownership, strategic, assessment, competency, team, customer satisfaction, validate, support, asset, environment, parameter, maximize, focus, system, paradigm, and so many more.

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Business people who are clueless about how to write well will generously pepper their emails, memos, reports, and presentations with these and other buzzwords. They string them together to create awesome sounding yet totally meaningless documents.

They breathlessly write such awfulness as “at the end of the day empowerment strategies must be globally deployed across silos to flatten and realign assessment paradigms that will yield world class solutions outside the box while increasing downside revenues during an off economy in the short term in order to add shareholder and stakeholder value….”

Sounds impressive yet it’s totally meaningless. And I loathe the phrase “at the end of the day.”

Ah, the sublime poetry of C-suite writers. We don’t know what they’re saying but they sure know how to use those big, impressive words!

Ambiguity! Obfuscation! Opacity! Boredom! Death!

No one talks like this. If you happen to meet someone who does, slap them silly with a copy of Strunk and White. You do have one, don’t you?

In his book The Dilbert Principle, Scott Adams warps the simple phrase, "I used my fork to eat a potato,” into the buzzworded disaster, "I utilized a multitined tool to process a starch resource."

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

The next time you’re tempted to employ beclouding verbosity, stop! Heed these simple tips to unbusy your business writing to create content that will tantalize and enlighten your readers:

1. Use conversational English. Write the way you and your colleagues talk. Keep your writing simple, direct, and accessible.
     
2. Use short sentences and compact paragraphs. Vary the length of your sentences. Break up big paragraphs. Make it easy for your reader to read.
     
3. Use simple words.  Change words such as “utilize” to “use,” “paradigm” to “model,” “example,” or “set of values.”
     
4. Use bullets. When you are making two or more points under a main thought, make them bullets. If the points indicate a sequence, use a number list.
     
5. Use common sense. Write the way you wish others would write when you’re reading another completely indecipherable corporate memo.

When authoring corporate compositions and declarations, employing linguistic devices that deconstruct elaborate phrasal permutations will yield outputs from which obsfuscatory verbosity has been annihilated resulting in more elucidating treatises and memorandums.

Translation: Writing with clarity is a good thing.

Do you have examples of really bad corporate writing? Stories of dealing with executives who don’t get it? Perhaps experiences with corporate lawyers who insist on dense writing? Or your own tips for better business writing?

Sound off! I’d love to read your comments, stories, and examples.  

And if you really must use bad business writing, here are some fun tools to assist you:

• The Advertising Slogan Generator
• Random Phrase Generator (my favorite)
• Buzzword Generator (ignore everything else on the page and just click the ENTER button)

    

(*Jabberwocky)

Emoting through email

I’ve got a good friend who’s not so keen on email. He prefers the phone. But connecting by phone given his schedule is not always easy. So I email him. Sometimes it’ll take a couple of emails to two different email addresses to nudge him to reply.

Responding to a recent email he stated, “It has been a long time since we talked. This, by the way is email, not talking!”

Well, it may not be talking but it is communicating!

Many complain that email is not as personable or effective as face-to-face communication or a phone call. Some refuse to deal with emails, insisting on a call or a meeting, especially if the issue being dealt with is emotional or sensitive.

Their complaint is that nuance, such as body language and tone of voice, is lost in email. Email is cold, emotionless, and evil!

Nonsense!

For hundreds of years, since the invention of writing, people have emoted and communicated well through writing.

Email is not evil, but your writing may be

Think about it.

Way back in the pre-digital dark ages, the only communication channel available was face-to-face. This was handy dandy when everyone you needed to share information with lived within easy walking distance.

But then people spread out. Since it would be awhile before Al Gore invented the Internet, other means of long-distance communication had to be developed.

Yelling! Drums! Smoke signals! Town criers! Runners zipping from village to village with half-forgotten hastily-memorized messages! Telegraph was the original instant message. Stop.

Prior to the invention of the phone, moveable type, and Skype, a well-written letter was the channel of choice for moving detailed information across long distances.

Libraries are full of collections of letters written by historical notables and nobodies that provide keen insight into our past. These letters exude clear meaning and real emotion; even without meeting the writer in person, we are able to get a strong sense of who they were and what they were like.

Even today, a carefully crafted letter -- whether produced by hand or PC, delivered by digital fairies or the mailman -- is a treasure.

Email is nothing more than a digital letter.

Write lovingly and you’ll connect

Why are old letters treasured? Because they were crafted with care, thought, reason, and love, or at least some degree of passion and interest.

The personalities of the writers shone through the writing. The writers didn’t merely dash off a thoughtless note, they wrote well thought out messages.

You can create email messages that deliver your message and your personality!

Here’s how.

1. Organize your thoughts before you write your email. Sometimes this is best done with pen and paper. Yes, I’m serious. Jotting out a little outline can help you better visualize the message you want to deliver.
     
2. Structure the message logically. It’s tempting to dash off an email without really thinking about the overall structure. This is deadly and definitely not personable. Arrange the points in some sort of useful sequence.
     
3. Keep the tone friendly, but not too casual. Avoid slipping into deadly business-ese, but also stay away from cute-isms. Write like your message is of vital importance, because it is. If your message isn’t important, why are you bothering people with it?
     
4. Be clear on the action you want the recipient(s) to take. Do you want to them to answer a question? Buy your merchandise? Call you later? Be specific and clear about the what’s, when’s, and how’s of your message.
     
5. Write in a pleasant frame of mind. Seriously! Your attitude will come through in your writing by the words you choose and how you arrange them on the digital page. A happy person will write an upbeat message; lazy, angry, or sad writers will come across just that way.
     
6. Read and re-read your message before sending. Yes, you do have time for this! You want your email to be clear, complete, concise, and clever. You want the recipient(s) to read it, understand it, and act on it – promptly. Taking the time to review you message allows you to catch typos, rephrase unclear points, and move sentences around so your message is perfect. If what you send is messy, unclear, incomplete, or confusing, you’ll spend a lot more time having to explain what you really meant, and you’ll leave a bad impression on those you emailed.

If the message is truly important (and aren’t they all?) read it out loud. This may not be feasible in a cubicle setting. If you can, do it; reading out loud will help you hear how your message sounds to others.

Keep in mind that an email is a letter -- not an instant message, Tweet, or Facebook post. Writing email requires more effort and deserves more care.

Allow your personality to shine through your messages. The more you write with care, the more receptive your recipients, and the result will be a positive email experience for all.

It's a "major award!"

Hey! My other blog won an award! Go check it out: http://www.stephenrclarkblog.com/2012/05/this-is-really-something.html.

How to be seen when normal makes you invisible

Years ago I had a client who always managed to slip the phrase, “Nobody notices normal!” into our brainstorming sessions.

It was his way of reminding me that in marketing, public relations, and all forms of communication engagement, doing the same old same old will eventually get you ignored.

To be noticed and effectively engage your target audience requires being different and changing things up from time to time. Even being a tad wacky.

A common challenge issued by creativity sparkers is to “think outside the box!” This admonishment has become so “normal” that to be different could mean doing the opposite!

The challenge is figuring out how to not be normal without being abnormal, and thus viewed as weird, in the bad sense of the word.

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi declared that, “Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.”

In other words, discover in the commonplace the uncommon.

Here are three tips to help you see differently and move away from the invisibility of the familiar and normal:

1. Break the rules instead of following guidelines

This one is pretty obvious, right? But it’s not necessarily easy to do because it does entail a bit of risk. It also requires employing good judgment so you don’t go too far astray.

To break a rule you need first to figure out what they are.

And please note that I’m not talking about breaking any laws which could land you jail; that’s a kind of “different” you don’t need.

We’re surrounded by hundreds of implied or unspoken “rules.” Never wear white socks with a black suit or white clothes after Labor Day. Don’t chew with your mouth open. Limit the use of “and” in your writing and don’t begin a sentence with and. Sign direct mail letters with blue ink instead of black. And so it goes.

But what are the “rules” that are constraining you regarding the specific task you need a breakthrough on? Are they real? Imagined? Dictated by a client, HR, the law department, or a style manual? Perhaps you are you simply constrained by that conventional and conservative voice in your head chanting, “Be careful. Don’t rock the boat. Go along with everyone else.”

If you see a way to be different that involves breaking a rule, ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

And then ask, “What’s the best that could happen?”

Push that envelope, walk away from the cliché, and get yourself noticed!

2. Make new connections instead of doing what’s expected

Years ago, my high school drama/speech teacher threw a half-dozen pieces of colored chalk on the floor, invited us to stare down at them, and then challenged us to see differently. Instead of pieces of chalk, what else could be represented?

It took us awhile, but the ideas began to spark as we all moved around the chalk, viewing the pieces from different angles. Some of the responses were pretty flighty but they allowed our imaginations to take flight, and that was the point.

It was a simple exercise with a profound impact.

I absolutely loathe those icebreakers that ask you to introduce yourself by stating, if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be and why. But if an exercise like this works for you, go for it.

The tree exercise is basically taking a trip to who you are by way of the scenic route of metaphor.

Taking a different path, such as the one less traveled, is how you make new connections. You still move from point A to point Z, but instead of using straight line logic, you add some zigs and zags.

Asking “What if?” questions is another good way to go.

3. Play instead of brainstorm

This is one of my favorite things to do.

My office bookshelves, in addition to books, are loaded with gadgets, gizmos, noise-making toys, trinkets, and assorted odds and ends. And of course, I’ve got a couple of Hoops & Yoyo items that talk to me.

Handling them, playing with them, bouncing a ball, yo-yoing a yo-yo, firing a “space” gun, shooting rubber darts at the walls all contribute to freeing the imagination. Reading comics or children’s books works, too.

Physical play helps distract the mind from logical constraints and allows you to more easily see old things in new ways.

It’s like being a kid again and seeing something for the first time; you aren’t encountering an expectation, you are making a discovery of the refreshing unknown.

Familiarity breeds invisibility

Rules, guidelines, assembly instructions, tradition, conventional wisdom, job descriptions, and the like are all good and useful tools, except when they aren’t.

In every job there will be instances where no SOP (standing operating procedure) exists. You’ll be required to act based on your experience and instinct to solve a problem that’s never occurred before, or at least was never documented.

Normal will not help you to creatively get a message through the clutter, to reach and touch other human beings in a transforming manner, to break through to real innovation, or to exhibit compassion through versatility.

These are times to sidestep normal and maybe be just a little wacky, which could lead to the unique result that brings desired attention to your message, product, or service.