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Dear Executive: Say What You Mean

If you read Clare Lynch's article called: " 10 Ways to Protect Your Copy from A Verbose Exec ", you'll see the following sentence: "There's nothing worse than some verbose exec "improving" your finely crafted copy by inserting references to "delivering key learnings," "driving employee integration strategies," and "interfacing holistically with clients." If you're anything like me, you actually want to tackle rewriting those mucky terms she's highlighted. Let's start with the first one: delivering key learnings. The word 'learning' is a noun; that's not the problem. When you put an 's' on it, you are attempting to count an abstract concept like learning, and that causes confusion. Allow me to give you an example:  Merriam-Wester defines learning as: "knowledge or skill acquired by instruction or study." You do not typically count the number of knowledges you've acq...
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"We can't tell them that."

The scenario: A project is delayed. Employees haven't heard any updates in about a month and the manager realizes he's 'got to get something out soon' because his boss has been asking what's going on. Manager:  I need a draft message for the project update. How soon can you get it to me? Communications Officer:  How about tomorrow? Manager:  I kind of need it today some time. Communications Officer:  How about today? Manager:  Okay good.  Communications Officer:  So the reason for the delay is other projects took priority but now it's time to return to this one, right? Manager:  "We can't tell them that."  Communications Officer:  Why not? Manager:  Well because it looks bad. I hear those words from a senior manager or executive and sigh. There are precious few things we truly "CAN'T" tell employees: private information about other employees financially-sensitive information the CEO's kid's cellpho...
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How to Manage Document Version Control During Communications Campaigns

You've spent all this time working to get your communications right--whether you're the client, the manager, or the communications officer--and suddenly you see an 'older' version when the director sends out his/her message or it shows up on the corporate website. Then you swear out loud and realize that the reason you're seeing one of the changes from several versions ago is because someone made a boo-boo and pulled up the wrong non-final version. This is going to happen. In Communications work, we see a lot of versions of numerous documents via email, especially, causing challenges for version control. For these very situations, I purposefully have the following file naming convention so people know they have the latest version.  I "time-stamp" them. That means when I did my 'save-as', I captured the date and time in the document's file name. I do it ever time. Always. And it has consistently saved my bacon. Also, by doing it th...
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