This is a transcript of one of the videos in the plain language training course Writing well at work. There are references to slides and visual material that are only available by viewing the video.
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Well, as we start this course, I’d like to pose the question.
What makes a document good?
We’re going to spend a fair bit of time thinking about documents and how we can make them better for our readers, so it would be helpful to have some idea of what we’re striving for.
Now, as I asked that question, it’s likely you might come up with some ideas like a good document is easy to read. It’s well structured or it contains the information I need or it looks good.
A good document is effective – achieves purpose
All those ideas are really helpful. I think they are features of a good document. But when I was starting to think about what made a document good I thought firstly a good document is effective.
And by effective I mean it achieves purpose. It does what it’s intended to do. There is no point in writing a document that sits on a computer driver that sits on a shelf somewhere that nobody ever reads a document like that is a waste of time.
Value in reflective thinking
So firstly, a good document must be effective. And because of that, I think there’s a couple of questions that we should be considering about all documents.
- Did this document do the job?
- Did it achieve its objectives?
Now my observation is that these types of questions are very rarely asked about documents. Somehow we seem to have developed the attitude – Look if the document has been written, the job has been done. Let’s get on to something else. And of course there is always something else to get on to.
But I think it is really valuable to spend a little bit of time doing some reflective thinking about the effectiveness of a document, whether it did achieve achieve its objectives, whether it did meet its purpose.
A good document is efficient
The second idea I had when I was thinking about what made a document good is that a good document is efficient.
Now effectiveness and efficiency. They come as no surprise to you because you’re often talking about those dimensions at work.
It is important that a good document is efficient. It is written and read quickly. We’re going to invest some significant resources in crafting this document – in researching and drafting and writing and reviewing and designing – a whole bunch of things will go on.
We do want to make sure that that investment has been a wise investment. And we’ve got, if you like, a good bang for your buck. So it is important that the document is written quickly, but perhaps even more important is that the document is read quickly, and that’s especially important when we’re talking about internal documents.
The importance of being able to read a document quickly
Let me give you a quick example just to illustrate that.
Let’s suppose you had to write an email one day. Now I guess we all write multiple emails every day, but this particular day you were pushed for time and you rushed the email a little bit.
You were reasonably happy that you could write this email in just two minutes, but because you rushed it, it was just a little bit confusing. It was just a little bit unclear.
Now you sent this email out to 20 people and on average they took around about 3 minutes to read it and then think about it and figure out how they needed to respond to this email. And so that piece of communication has cost the organisation 62 minutes.
But of course, if something’s a little bit unclear, that’s not the only cost. That’s not the only thing that can happen.
If something’s a little bit unclear, it’s likely to generate some clarifying phone calls. People may call you, or they’ll call their colleagues to talk about this email and figure out how they need to respond.
And of course, we know how phone calls work, don’t you? Hi there. How you doing? Yeah. What did you get up to on the weekend? How are your kids going at school now? Ah, the traffic coming in this morning wasn’t that terrible.
And so there’s all this chatter before we start talking about the content of the email. And so we’ve wasted a little more time. We’ve compromised our efficiency a little bit.
But of course, if something’s a little bit unclear, there could be other consequences. People might do the wrong thing or fail to do the right thing. Now that could result in some rework. That would be sad, because that means we’ve compromised our efficiency a little further. But it could also go in lots of different directions. There could be legal consequences or reputational damage. Who knows where that could go?
Well, compare that email with a more thoughtful email. This time you took twice as long to write it, but you achieved great clarity. Your readers could read, understand, and act on it in just two minutes, and you save the organisation 26% with that piece of communication with the cost of that email.
Now, look, I know that’s a total fabrication. We can’t measure things that way, but I just give you that example to highlight how important it is to make sure that the documents, especially internal documents, can be read quickly.
So good documents need to be effective. And they need to be efficient.
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