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November 20, 2006

Don’t make these mistakes

Ever have a friend that keeps making the same mistake over and over again? You try to help, to give advice that will prevent your friend from getting burned—but he or she seems to do that dumb thing repeatedly, and all you can do is stand there, helplessly shaking your head.

That’s how I feel when I see smart professionals making communication mistakes. They should know better, but they keep creating communication that simply isn’t effective. Here are five mistakes I keep seeing again and again. Please don’t try these at work:

1. Too long. 1,500 words is never the right length anymore. Neither is 1,000. People don’t have time to read that much content, especially on-line, but not in print vehicles, either. Long content turns people off before they even start. You’ve got to stop.

2. Too complex. The senior VP of Whatever may love complicated concepts, described in great detail, but no one else cares. As a matter of fact, they’re more likely to tune out if communication is too technical, jargon-laded, MBA-oriented. You know this already. Now you need to convince the subject matter expert or senior executive to simplify.

3. Too abstract. What is quality, anyway? Innovation? Customer service? Abstract terms that I can’t picture—unless you bring them to life by showing examples, telling stories, making them tangible. (Like my “friend” example in the first paragraph.) If your communication is abstract, employees won’t connect.

4. Word-based. We’re living in a You Tube world, where people can download television shows, songs, photos, audio snippets—anything you can imagine. That’s why writing alone doesn’t seem very dynamic. Can you make it visual? Can you make it move? Can you bring it to life?

5. Poorly timed. If you’re communicating initiatives that start six or 18 months from now, employees will hit the delete button right now. This is a just-in-time universe. People prize immediacy; it needs to make sense to what I’m doing today. Get the timing right.

Most of these are fairly easy to correct, so start today. You can do it!

Posted by Alison Davis at 02:21 PM

November 07, 2006

Visuals get my vote

This morning I went out early to vote at my designated polling place, an elementary school. It was the usual scene: The gym filled with tables and voting booths and cheerful senior citizens signing voters in and working the machine. Voters rushed in on their way to work, looking intent and virtuous after they’d done their civic duty.

And something else: stuff tacked and pasted on every surface of every wall. It’s an elementary school, after all, and teachers use every opportunity they can to get students’ attention and display their work.

On one wall was a bar chart indicating the kids’ favorite color of autumn leaves (red won, with yellow coming in second and brown a distant third.) And on another were drawings students had done to depict their favorite scene of the children’s classic book, Make Way for Ducklings. Down the hall kids had made collages of leaves they brought from home, with captions indicating from which kind of tree each leaf had fallen. And on the door were hand-made posters inviting children to participate in the “Thanksgiving Food Drive” with illustrations of the types of products being sought.

Simple? Hardly. Through visuals on the wall, children were being educated about statistics (polling), literature (the book), science (trees) and social responsibility (the food drive). And it was all colorful, easy to understand and appealing.

Are your walls being put to good use? Are your posters as effective? Take a trip to your nearest school to learn more.

Posted by Alison Davis at 09:29 AM