Page 37 - Today’s Business Communication; A How-to Guide for the Modern Professional

26 TODAY’S BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

for. In other words, consider your message’s raison d’être. To be effective,
your messages need to have a reason to exist—they need to have a purpose.
Business communicators who take the time to articulate the purpose of
important messages are less likely to make strategic and tactical errors.
We see a message’s purpose as being comparable to a company’s mis-
sion statement. Mission-driven companies have a clear social mission and
they pursue profit and realize growth through those avenues that bol-
ster the mission. Mission-driven companies don’t just chase dollars. They
don’t pursue profit and growth at the expense of their mission’s goals. In
these companies, decision making is driven by the mission. If a particular
action does not support the mission, it is not undertaken. Your message’s
purpose statement should help you to make the important strategic
decisions you will face when crafting your message. Purpose statements
should help you to make difficult choices, provide you with direction,
and help you get to the point.
So, what is a purpose statement? A purpose statement is a declarative
statement that identifies your intended audience and what you want that
audience to know, do, or believe as a result of exposure to your message.
Before you fire off that next email, take a moment and see if you can
write down the message’s purpose statement in a declarative statement.
The purpose statement should not be one or two words, but a complete
statement. For instance, budget and cutting the budget are not purpose
statements. A purpose statement looks more like this: I must convince the
regional manager to cut his budget by 10% for the next fiscal year or issue
layoff notices to two employees�

Consider More Detailed Objectives

In addition to your higher order purpose, you should consider the
following four questions:

1. What is it that you really want to achieve with your message?
2. What organizational goals are fulfilled by your message?
3. How can your message support your brand identity?
4. What effect do you want your message to have on the relationships
involved?
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