Communication Tips
Language can be a wonderful thing. At times, it’s an imperfect communication tool. If you’ve ever been puzzled by a response to something you wrote or said, you may be happy to have these tips:
How much do your employees need to know to take the correct action? A 432-page manual that included a history of the industry and notable people in the past motivated employees to call headquarters to ask how to do their jobs. The 86-page replacement that included 43 illustrations of forms that would cross the desks of the employees and facing pages with instructions ended the calls for help and released the people at headquarters to do their own jobs.
When writing procedures, sequential, numbered steps eliminate the need for phrases like, “before you enter the account number, close out the previous transaction.” If the previous transaction ended with, “close out the transaction,” you can save time and avoid human errors that can occur with an account left open. It’s even worse if the “before” is mentioned several steps too late.
Nothing confuses people as much as using different names for the same thing. If your doctor calls a prescription by one name and pharmacists use another name and you throw in a generic substitute, you don’t know if you have the right thing. “Are you still taking X?” when you didn’t know you were ever taking something called “X” can be alarming. When it comes to tools, every tool has a proper name and operations are smoother when everyone uses the same name.
Avoid these communication pitfalls and get results you’re after instead of unwanted surprises.
