Caring too much begins with a process of identification. Identification is a basic psychological process that helps us define who we are and where we stand within our society and the world. In modern Western society, people tend to identify strongly with their occupation (e.g. I am a teacher. She is an engineer). We also define ourselves in terms of what we believe (I am a socialist. He is a vegetarian). Placed in positions of authority, people will identify with the office or organization itself (I am the Director. She is the Minister). Problems occur when people identify so completely with their occupation or position that they leave no room for other aspects of their lives. For example, insurance companies discovered long ago that males retired from senior and middle management positions have a higher than average incidence of death within 3 to 5 years of retirement. They identified so completely with the company and the position that they had nothing left for themselves and literally died of boredom.

When leaders ‘become the organization’ they harm not only themselves, they harm the organization and the people who work for them. In extreme cases they can destroy the organization. Usually they move on to bigger and better things before that happens, leaving only damage as their legacy. The downward spiral begins with a kind of autistic rapture by which the leader establishes a monopoly on caring. “No one cares as much as me, no one is more committed than me, no one sees the big picture in such clarity or depth as I do”. In the beginning, followers admire this intensity of commitment. It is exhilarating. It is an honor to be the focus of the leaders attention as he lays out the vision to you personally. But ever so slowly, followers come to feel excluded and diminished. No one can measure up to the standards of the leader. Nothing they do is enough. Nothing is ever good enough. Presenting another point of view demonstrates a lack of understanding. To question demonstrates lack of faith. To not accept the leader’s interpretation is treason.

Because the leader has become the organization, there is no longer any distinction between personal opinion, personal taste and organizational policy. No aspect of managing the organization is below the leaders notice or concern. In the beginning, followers are flattered by the leaders attention to routine tasks. The leader sits in on committee meetings and offers views. The leader meets privately with followers to enlist their personal support with various ‘issues’. The leader copyedits all outgoing communication and chooses the color for the cover of the annual report. Managing the organization becomes a process of interior decoration. Corporate policy is replaced with personal whim. Eventually, as their own scope for decision-making shrinks, followers come to resent what they now see as micro-management. Finally, people just give up making decisions because whatever they ‘decide’ has to be approved by the leader anyway.

Paradoxically, as followers come to regard the leader as remote, autocratic, paternalistic and demanding, the leader becomes more energized. The growing disillusionment among followers serves only to reinforce the leaders belief that he alone can carry the burden. The problem is the followers. They don’t have the required capacities. They don’t see the big picture. They aren’t really committed. The leader redoubles efforts to promote the organizations cause and its public image. Consultants are brought in to compensate for the “lack of capacity in-house”. Consultants are good listeners. If they disagree, they can be easily replaced. The leader can insulate himself from criticism with consultants and executive assistants. The main chore of the followers now becomes ‘handling’ the leader. What’s the best way and when is the best time to present a request of a certain kind so it stands a chance of approval?

The organization has now reached a kind of stasis. Everyone does their job and things get done, but the emperor has no cloths. The best people don’t renew their contracts. Outside the organization, cynical jokes begin to circulate. People shake their heads and hope the next leader will be better.

Advice to leaders

• Don’t confuse your own needs with the needs of other people or the needs of the organization.
• Don’t confuse your own beliefs with what’s ‘right’.
• Don’t confuse being right with winning.
• If the organization ‘falls apart’ after you leave, then you didn’t do your job. You didn’t leave it with people strong enough to run it in your absence. You failed as a leader.
• Consider yourself a ‘steward’ of the organization. The organization will outlive you. You are here to see it through the present times. Your job is prepare it for the next leader. Do that and your picture will always be on the wall, a wall near the entrance and not under the stairwell.
• If you ever wonder about your own importance, stick you hand in a pail of water and see how big a hole you leave when you pull it out.

Writing to impress, not to express

Jargon, bureaucratise, or “Mandarin” style writing is writing to impress, not to express. This kind of writing is a burden on readers and an obstacle to people who could write much better if they weren’t trying to write like a professor. The irony is that people who insist on Mandarin style writing tend to confuse or bore more people than they impress.

Bad writing drives out good

Bad writing drives out good writing. That seems to be the rule in most organizations. Since most people learn to write by “emulating” their seniors, it is no wonder that a lot of writing tends to be unnecessarily long, formal and, in many cases, just plain old-fashioned. The advent of word processing and the cut and paste function has only made the problem worse.

The Plain English Campaign

Plain English is clear, readable English. Plain English is text that the intended audience can read, understand and act upon the first time they read it. Plain English takes into account design and layout as well as language. Plain English should be used wherever and whenever people rely on clearly presented information to make informed decisions.

Red Plough International Co. Ltd. supports the Plain English Campaign.

For a free assessment of your own writing, send a one-page sample to clayton@loxinfo.co.th

See Technical Writing Kit [hyperlink to the kit] for a little fun!

Think about the organization you work for now. How did it begin? What was the original vision? What are the milestone events in its history? How many people have worked for or with your organization since it started? Where are those people today? Where would I find a complete set of annual reports or the minutes to the Steering Committee meeting from two years ago? And what is the value in asking these questions?

Few organizations think of their history as a resource. Keeping track of the people who have worked with you and for you is your network of friends and allies. Sending them your newsletter or a New Year’s greeting is the mechanism that keeps your mailing list up to date and helps those people remember you. I once met a government officer who attended a river ecology workshop ten years ago. He still gets the institute’s newsletter. He’s impressed that they continue to remember him and if they ever need a friend in the region, you can be sure he would do everything possible to help them. In the process of helping one organization with its records management, I discovered that the country they work in once had a National Environment Committee. The people who were junior officers then are Director Generals and Vice-Ministers now. Unfortunately, no one currently working in this organization remembered any such committee or the connection they once had with these well-placed people. Universities have alumnae associations, why not development organizations?

Only a few of the organizations I have worked with take good care of their documents. Most organizations know they have to keep financial records for five years and everyone has a document centre and a simple filing system of some sort. I know they exist, but I have yet to work with an organization that has a systematic records management policy that gives people clear directions on what to do with any document that comes across their desk: where to file it, how long to keep it in the active files, what to do with it after one year, two years, ten years. This is especially important if your organization has a high staff turnover or uses a lot of short-term consultants. Every time a staff member or consultant leaves a job, they tend to leave behind stacks of books and papers. Without a good records management system, the next person to occupy that workspace has no direction or authority to do anything with that stack and just pushes it into a corner out of the way. I have seen stacks like this a metre high, usually next to a row of half empty filing cabinets. You can’t throw the whole stack out without sorting through every item because you don’t know what might be in there: an unfiled consultant’s report you paid thousands of dollars for; minutes from a meeting where important decisions were made; photographs that would be just right for the next annual report or some other unexpected treasure like the last known copy of your lease agreement. These examples are not made up, they are things I have actually found in these abandoned stacks.

Every activity an organization undertakes has a history. Every activity has a starting point when it was first thought of and a record of discussions. Perhaps several different people or groups of people have worked on this activity over time. Consultants were hired to advise, outside agencies were contacted, letters and emails exchanged, MoUs drafted and signed. Along the way, problems were encountered then overcome. During implementation, some things worked, some didn’t. How many organizations could quickly call up a record of all that? Why would they want to? First, people are going to feel much more confident going into situations when they know ‘the whole story’. It was my task on one assignment to help organize a series of national and regional workshops for a team of consultants who were formulating guidelines for Environmental Impact Assessment that could be agreed to and adopted by four countries. Early on in the process, I wondered if anything like this had been done before. Fortunately, this organization does have a good document centre and we were able to quickly write up a ‘project history’ that went back to 1982. People were amazed that so much past effort had gone into this project. It added a whole new dimension to the project by giving it an historical context and it raised useful questions. What became of the guidelines drafted in 1982? Where were the people who had taken the environmental management training in 1992? Were any of them here today? I try to persuade managers they would get more ‘value for money’ from their consultants if they provided histories like this before consultants arrived. I also believe that consultants and staff would get more satisfaction from their work if they felt they were contributing to something with a history rather than just a two or three month project.

Organizations ‘forget’ and things go missing because the capacity to remember is seldom externalized. Every organization has its ‘old hand’ who can remember everything and has bookcases and filing cabinets and boxes full of documents and photographs that go back years. All you have to do is ask. That works as long as that person is with you and as long as they are willing to share all that information. In large organizations, it works as long as everyone knows who that person is. I worked with one organization that has a headquarters staff of over 100. Of those 100 people, only five had been with the organization longer than seven years. Hardly anyone else in the organization knew who those five were. A lot of time and effort is spent by ‘new’ people rediscovering the past when so much of it is just across the hall.

Supposing you are now convinced of the value of the past, where do you begin? A professional records management system is the basis for externalizing organizational memory. Oxfam publishes a helpful ‘starter’ guide called ‘Information Management for Development Organizations’. If you are looking for more advanced information, try the new ISO 15489 Information and Documentation – Records Management or the UN Global Filing Classification System. Aid Workers Network (www.aidworkers.net) has a good collection of links or just type ‘records management’ into an Internet search engine and stand back while the information pours in.

Do not start with computer software and do not start before you have done a proper systems analysis of your needs. And remember, no matter what state your records may be in today, it’s never too late to start.

Keeping your documents in good order is a necessary foundation but it will take more than this to create a sense of ‘living history’ in your organization. A good photo collection is essential. You must establish the habit for everyone in your organization to record the basic ‘who, what, where, when, and why’ details for the pictures they take. Without this information, even the most beautifully composed or important photographs are useless for publication or display. Also consider a one-day workshop with a professional photographer on ‘how to take good pictures’. You will be amazed at how much more value you get from all the money you spend on digital cameras.

Photographs are not much use if they aren’t displayed. Every organization I work with has bulletin boards with snapshots of recent events but I have yet to see a good permanent display that portrays a history of the organization itself. Imagine the impact that would have on people walking into your offices for the first time.

Start writing your ‘corporate history’. With the help of the agency’s public relations officer, I managed to capture 50 years of history in three pages of text (visit http://www.mrcmekong.org/about_mrc.htm#Story). The ‘outputs’ (a web site section and a three-panel theme brochure) are valuable communication tools in themselves, but the process of telling the story was equally important. It helped us identify a list of milestone events, a collection of key historical documents and photographs, significant gaps in documentation and themes for a series of informative exhibits.

Most of us are so busy keeping up with day-to-day events and planning the future that we have no time to keep track of the past. This is unfortunate because an organization that cannot remember its past has a poor foundation on which to build its future. With a few simple systems and some slight changes in habitual procedures, most organizations could take better advantage of this enormous resource with little additional effort.

Interested in Records Management? See AidWorkers Network section on the basics of records management http://www.aidworkers.net/admin/records.html

To put SIAIP to work, arrange the modules in A-B-C-D order. Take any four-digit number (8751, for example) and then read phrase 8 off of Module A, phrase 7 off of module B, etc. The result is an SIMP sentence.

After you have mastered the basic technique, you can realize the full potential of SIAIP by arranging the modules in D-A-C-B or B-A-C-D order. In these advanced configurations, some additional commas may be required.

Module A

1. In particular,
2. On the other hand,
3. However,
4. Similarly,
5. As a resultant implication,
6. In this regard,
7. Based on integrate subsystem considerations,
8. For example,
9. Thus,
10. In respect to specific goals,

Module B

1. a large portion of the interface coordination communication
2. a constant flow of effective information
3. the characterization of specific criteria
4. initiation of critical subsystem development
5. the fully integrated test program
6. the product configuration baseline
7. any associated supporting element
8. the incorporation of additional mission constraints
9. the independent functional principle
10. a primary interrelationship between system and/or subsystem technologies

Module C

1. must utilize and be functionally interwoven with
2. maximizes the probability of project success and minimizes the cost and time required for
3. adds explicit performance, limits to
4. necessitates that urgent consideration be applied to
5. require considerable systems Dialysis and trade-off studies to arrive at
6. is further compounded, when taking into account
7. presents extremely interesting challenges to
8. recognizes tile importance of oilier systems and the necessity for
9. effects a significant implementation to
10. adds overriding performance constraints to

Module D

1. the sophisticated hardware
2. the anticipated third-generation equipment
3. the subsystem compatibility testing
4. the structural design, based on system engineering concepts
5. the preliminary qualification limit
6. the philosophy of commonality and standardization
7. the evolution of specifications over a given period of time
8. the greater flight-worthiness concept
9. any discrete configuration mode
10. the total system rationale

Acknowledgement

Red Plough International Co. Ltd. would like to acknowledge the original source of the Technical Writing Kit, but we don’t who it is. If you do, please let us know.

An editor also works for the organization that hires him/her to make sure that publications are accurate, attractive, pleasing to the audience and will not cause any legal or other problems for the organization (copyright, political censure, cultural sensitivities).

Finally, an editor works for an author. In addition to checking accuracy and improving readability, the editor ensures that the ‘voice’ of an individual author comes through in the text.

Working With An Editor

Editors come in all shapes and sizes. Retired professionals sometimes take up editing to fend off boredom or ‘keep their hand in’. College students and English teachers will offer editorial services to make extra money. Depending on your needs, a part-time or semi-professional editor may suit your purpose well enough.

If you just want to ‘correct the English’ in an internal report, almost any fluent English speaker can do the job. If you are printing 2500 four- color brochures to showcase your project or program or submitting a journal article to an internationally refereed journal, you might want someone with considerable experience editing that kind of material for that purpose. The more specialized the text and the more ‘professional’ the publication you want to produce, the more you should budget for editing.

Professional editors offer more than expertise in modern language usage, style and tone. A good editor will spot inconsistencies and potentially damaging or sensitive material that should be revised. In addition, a professional editor can help you design your publication to facilitate printing. Professional editors will most often be members of one or more professional bodies.

Levels Of Editing vs Cost

In practice, there is little difference in the time required and hence the final cost for different levels of editing. Issues include the type of publication and its purpose, the author’s skill as a writer, reading level of the intended audience, how much control the author wants to give the editor, how much space is available for completed text and final cost of publication. It can, for example, take less time and effort to rewrite an article than to copyedit or structurally revise it.

Structural Editing and Rewriting

Structural editing may include adding or deleting entire sections of text; combining, dividing or relocating existing sections; moving some material to appendices; deleting or rewriting large blocks of text within a section; choice of rhetorical strategies; level of descriptive detail and any other measures required to clarify meaning or improve readability for the intended audience.

Stylistic Editing

Clarifying meaning, eliminating jargon and unnecessary repetition; ‘smoothing’ language, and other non-mechanical line-by-line editing; creating or recasting tables and or figures.

Copyediting

Correcting grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other mechanics of style; checking for consistency of fonts, point size, capitalization, line spacing, use of fixed expressions, citations and references, margins, page numbering and other such details.

Proofreading

Proofreading is a separate and highly specialized skill. Proofreading is a process of hunting for the tiniest of errors (a spelling mistake, a space in front of a comma, the wrong article, a missing hyphen, inconsistent word forms, a “form” that should be a “from”, a change in font or point size, etc.) while at the same time keeping an eye on syntax, sentence construction and overall consistency. It is extremely difficult for either the author or the editor to proofread a text they are working on because their familiarity with the text makes them blind to errors at this level.