The other day, I managed finally to watch Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino with some friends of mine. One of the scenes reminded me of issues faced when writing documentation: What do you leave out?

To set the scene, Clint’s Eastwoord’s character, Walt Kowalski, is a gruff Korean War veteran and retired Ford autoworker still living in his older neighbourhood that is quickly being repopulated with Hmong immigrants and gangs. After a failed burglary and gang initiation, Walt’s teenaged next-door neighbour (Thao) comes to apologize, and to work for Walt as both punishment and compensation.

Walt is a very self-sufficient man, keeping his property and belongings well maintained, and generally sitting on his veranda drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon. As such, he has no work for Thao—until he surveys his neighbourhood a little more and sees the disrepair into which many of the houses have fallen. He gets Thao to repair the roof and eavestroughing of the house across the street.

At this point, one of my friends, an intelligent, well-educated nursing manager and operating room nurse, asked, “Why that house? Why is that house important?” And it wasn’t so much that the house was important, but the audience is expected to realize that Walt has become tired of sitting on his porch staring at his old neighbour’s house falling down across from him.

But could Eastwood (as the director) not have included a short scene where Walt and the new neighbour across the street have words about the state of the house? Or where Walt makes a specific comment about having to stare at that particular house as it falls down? Would it really have made a difference to the story, or most people’s understanding?

We make decisions like this every day. Whether it’s to include a word in a glossary or index, add an introduction or conclusion to a procedure, include a screenshot or even to write for a particular audience. There’s always a choice to be made that will either add to the understanding of a document or take away from it. These are especially important decisions when factoring in budget and time constraints:

• Do we have time to change the glossary or index?
• Can we afford to print more pages?
• Do we have time to write more introductions and conclusions, and get them reviewed?
• Is there time to get and properly edit the screenshot?
• Can we rewrite for a novice audience or do we continue writing for the expert audience?

While I’m certain we’d all love to write the perfect document every time, in the end, the original planning and analysis should have accounted for all of these issues. Something may have been missed, but it must become part of the post-project review, something to consider for the next time.

Movie-makers don’t get a second chance to make a movie, but much of our documentation can be revised later and having a solid review to work from is an excellent starting point.

How do you make sure you get all the right information into your documents?

Image courtesy Ian Britton | FreeFoto.com

For the record, I work at Starbucks part-time to cover my bills and also to get out of my basement home office for a little while. I’ve learned a lot about coffee and people, but I’ve also learned a little more about language.

There are a number of conventions that Starbucks’ uses to ensure consistency from store to store. I’m going to discuss calling beverages (i.e., once made, the barista calls the drink for the customer to pick up) :

• Iced Double Tall Vanilla Non-fat Latte
• Grande Sugar-free Vanilla Caramel Macchiato
• Venti Non-fat One Splenda Dry Cappuccino
• Tall Caramel No Whip White Mocha

I may be revealing some corporate secrets here and Starbucks will perhaps ask me to cease-and-desist, but there is a consistent order for calling beverages:

1. Number of beverages (e.g., customer ordered two of the same drink)
2. Type of cup (e.g., personal; hot or cold)
3. Decaffeinated
4. Shot quantity (i.e., the number of espresso shots)
5. Size (i.e., Short, Tall, Grande, Venti)
6. Flavouring
7. Milk
8. Customization
9. Beverage name

There are default options to each of the nine items that the barista doesn’t need to call, making the calling significantly easier. However, there also beverage names and brand names that need to be called that duplicate other items being called:

• Iced Tall Iced Coffee
• Grande Coffee Frappuccino Blended Coffee
• Venti Chai Crème Frappuccino Blended Crème

I happened to pop over to the McDonalds for a quick snack while working last night and came to an interesting realization about my double cheeseburger: at Starbucks it would probably need to be a double cheese double burger. The bacon double cheeseburger would be a double cheese with bacon double burger. A quarter pounder with cheese with no pickles would be a cheese no pickle quarter pounder.

One would hope that reason would be a factor in calling beverages, reducing the redundancy:

• Tall Iced Coffee
• Grande Blended Coffee Frappuccino
• Venti Chai Blended Crème Frappuccino

Just my opinion. Thanks for listening.

Image © Serghei Starus | Dreamstime.com

Seriously, I had a dream about useful communication. I think by the time I tell this story it will seem pretty trivial and uninformative, but it’s a story I really feel like telling.

In my dream the other night, I was part of a team transferred to an existing department. I seemed to be in a hospital and I seemed to be a doctor, but not being a doctor nor working in a hospital, I’m not certain.

The existing department had a ritual of singing a particular song at the beginning of meetings and my team was expected to sing it. This was supposed to be some kind of team-building exercise. Unfortunately, no one on my team was familiar withe the song. And, like the national anthem at sporting events, only a few people around us seemed to be singing, and were mumbling. The whole affair seemed to be some weird Gregorian chant.

My team certainly did not feel like they were part of the larger group in this so-called team-building event; I chose to speak up about it. (Generally in my dreams, I’m unable to speak at all.)

I was very eloquent in my argument that if this was to be a team-building exercise then it would be more useful to ensure that the whole team be involved. The department could have:

• supplied my team with the lyrics to the song,
• ensured that their members knew the lyrics and would sing them clearly,
• chosen a song that would be familiar to a larger group, including my team, or
• found some other way to welcome us to the team.

This reminds me of my audience analysis post, without being directly related. It’s essential to any communication to know your audience; if anything, know what they already know and speak to what they don’t. And people will be much more engaged when the communication is obviously intended for them.

Image by Free-StockPhotos.com

Twitter is an interesting phenomenon. I generally (but not always) have TweetDeck running in the background while I’m working on my desktop. And while I don’t read every single tweet that shows up, I look at a lot of them. By following some of the links that seem interesting, I come across some interesting people with interesting blogs. I will usually follow them and subscribe to the RSS feed of their blog. It may give me that many more blogs to read (that I don’t have time for) and that many more tweets to read (that I don’t have time for), but it often results in some interesting new insights that I otherwise wouldn’t have found.

Like this great post, and in general this great blog, about getting a second set of eyes to review your work, or decisions, or whatever:

[W]hy wouldn‘t you ask someone to look at all of your stuff? Business plans, new boyfriend, marketing strategies, new suit, tagline, dinner party menu, web copy, first home, logo…

A new set of eyes is likely to find the flaws. You know, when you’ve looked at something so many times, they just seem natural and right to you.

The post talks about closing your eyes and assuming a specific yoga pose, then opening your eyes and reviewing your actual pose or posture. The writer is confident that you will find yourself well out of alignment and probably looking a little odd, but it will feel correct to you.

As with anything that you do, what feels or looks or otherwise seems correct or comfortable, may not be. It’s always worthwhile to get a second opinion.

Image by Free-StockPhotos.com