Page 41 - Today’s Business Communication; A How-to Guide for the Modern Professional

30 TODAY’S BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

provide research and data analysis services for the clients, but these
employees must also do their work efficiently and try to analyze data in
a way that meets company standards. In an effort to make new clients
happy, employees in client services will say yes to research requests that
require those in analytics to break company standards. The promises to
the client are often made in writing and the promises also support a com-
pany goal of attracting new business and making clients happy. How-
ever, this situation adversely influences the relationships between those
in analytics and those in client services. These promises are resource
intensive for analytics and they set a precedent that company standards
can be broken. Employees in analytics know that they will come under
increased management scrutiny for failing to meet an important orga-
nizational goal. As a result, Jeff tells us that relations between the two
departments can be strained. We aren’t arguing that company standards
are more important than client satisfaction, but we are pointing out
that blind pursuit of one goal without considering the communication
landscape can often have other negative and unintended consequences.
In the sections that follow, we will share with you a number of ideas
to improve your writing. These tips are not designed with only you in
mind. We provide these tips not just because they will make you a better
writer—and they will—but also because we know your audiences will
appreciate your efforts to adopt these tips.

Tips for Achieving Conciseness

As we discussed in Chapter 1, most people in business are busy—too
busy to read lengthy prose. So, one way that we can be more considerate
of our audiences is to work at avoiding common writing errors that result
in excessive wordiness.
Are you asking why conciseness matters? We wouldn’t blame you if
you read through this section and asked yourself if it is really worth your
time to save a few words here or there. We believe your time will be an
investment. Because the dominant business culture is low context, we put
nearly everything in writing. All of that writing takes time to produce,
resources to print or save, and time and energy to read. Our words require
lots of resources. Conciseness not only shows consideration for your