Effective Business Writing and Communications

Archive for April, 2010

Ever wondered how we get persuaded by a person who is trying to convince us? Human nature has the answer. Humans are believed to be persuaded either analytically or automatically. The latter occurs more often. The reason for this is when our brain analyzes; it requires a lot of energy. In fact, when our brain evaluates something thoroughly and critically is has to use the reserve glucose and calories.

Of course, we unconsciously avoid consuming all these energy. If there’s an easier way to get through things, humans would really prefer that. With that, there are more instances for us to respond automatically to persuasion, our body’s way of avoiding usage of too much energy. But, this does not necessarily mean that this energy-consumption process totally hinders us from using our analytical side. It’s just that in a fast-paced, spontaneous interaction, such as a persuasion attempt, we tend to be easily carried away by our emotions – consequently leading to some “automatic” decisions.

Given this idea, how do we achieve this automatic response from people? Below are some of the triggers that play a significant role in persuading people the easy way. This easy way means getting rid of any deliberation or mental activity, and just hit that trigger.

1. Special Connections. Being influenced by people we are connected to is most of the time inevitable. The sense of comfort we feel towards a person is the requirement for almost all triggers. So, if you are friends with someone you are trying to influence, all the important conditions to achieve that trigger are readily established – trust and comfort. Listening and common interests usually creates the first spark of friendship.
2. The Positive Authority. There is an inevitable compliance that is easily achieved when it comes to the persons with authority. Their authority or position would give people the impression that they know better. But reputation and position are futile if people don’t like the person in authority. As emphasized, in the first trigger, it is important that a person is comfortable with the person to create that trigger.
3. Conforming to Consistency. Generally, humans are conformists. Yet, we only conform to something that is consistent, something that has already been tested through time and experience. This typical response is in fact already wired in our brains. When we are confronted by a new situation we still consult with our past experiences and emotions for guidance.
4. Give-and-Take Nature. Humans are also wired to give back. We tend to view everything as a give-and-take process. We always want to earn what we deserve. To activate that trigger, it should be clear for people what they will earn from your in return.
5. Compare and Contrast. It always effective to have a point of comparison, just to see how good something is. This may not be a healthy way for all circumstances, but in persuasion attempts, it is important to present two options – your choice should appear to be always better, of course.
6. All the Reasons Why. To avoid further dissonance or deliberation, give them all the good reasons why they accept your proposition. By leaving no room for questions and confusions, you will also leave them with no choice but to accept.
7. Give Hope. If people see something as a potential way of achieving their aspirations, wishes, and plans, they tend to drop logic and just cling to that one glint of hope being offered.

Communication and improvement are two words that have so many meanings, as they are always used in different contexts. In the context of the workplace, communication has so many roles. Some of these are information sharing, networking, sales talking, and marketing. Improvement, on the other hand, is very vague unless it is put into context. What needs improvement? What kind of improvement is needed? Putting the two words together, “communication improvement” makes the discussion even more interesting. Before an improvement can be achieved, it is important to identify what part of communication needs that improvement, and how an improved communication looks like, eventually.

Throughout time, the ways of improving communication cannot merely be learned through books and other experiences. Lessons on effective communication are earned through experiences. These experiences are much more reliable, since we can be certain that it is in accordance with the situation where it is really relevant. Through time, the techniques that worked should be noted so that they would not just go to waste. They are already genuine wisdom that can still be applied in the future. Interviews, surveys, and other inquiry methods can be done to sort things out, such as the list below:

1. More Face-to-Face interactions – talking personally is always a better form of communication, since it is more sincere and clear. The other gesture involved contributes a lot to the richness of a communication act. For managers, the employees would be more engaged to listen and trust if they take an effort to really have a conversation with them. Likewise, the managers would also appreciate and understand their employees more if they communicate with them personally, especially when discussing important matters. Although some formal channels are also used in offices, like letters and memorandums, face to face interactions should also be equally frequent. Also, emails, text or instant messaging can also cause conflict because some misunderstandings can emerge.
2. Find common ground for people to connect – belonging to different departments should not be seen as a hindrance for having connection with the rest of the people in the workplace. Despite the separation of departments, there will always be a common ground that people from different departments can relate to. To address this, there should be some company meetings that involve all departments, and that also give department members the time to introduce their selves, and mingle.
3. Introduce them to your job – you may be in the same company, but can be doing extremely different jobs. With this, it may be helpful to introduce your co-worker to the kind of tasks that you strive to accomplish each day, and also take time to observe the jobs of others. For instance, if you are in the IT department, take some time to understand the jobs of those in the customer service. Not long enough, you will find out that despite the differences there are still interdependency in jobs. More importantly, by exposing yourself to the jobs of others, you lessen the tendency to judge people easily, thus reducing misunderstandings.
4. Create a Venue for Inter-Department Communication – networking is very important in a workplace. Sharing insights and stories with other departments can give a good view of the improvements that can still be done. More often than not, we need an outsider’s perspective to point out the areas that we still have to work on. There are many things that we can’t see through our own perspective alone. For people to be comfortable with this set-up, each department should be open for inquiries, comments, and suggestions.
5. Give Compliments – it may be a simple thank you note, a lunch treat, or a department party, as long as people know that their efforts are appreciated, it is already a very good start for building good relationships in the workplace. The power of compliments or appreciation on motivating people is irrefutable. This is just another way of connecting with people and making communication easier.

These five ways presented are not the only effective ways of improving communication in the business realm.  Everyone has their own experiences to turn to. But the basic idea here is, for people to talk, they should feel that they are actually free to talk, with the assurance that someone will listen.

Companies nowadays learn to embrace the significance of intangible assets in their success as a business, one of which is the grapevine happening in cyberspace.

One of the qualities of a good corporate management is being able to make the most out of the company’s grapevine. Grapevine are more than just humors being spread around; sometimes it contains a lot of juicy ideas that may not necessarily come out from formal discussions.

Informal communication does not only exist within the four walls of the workplace. The cyberspace has provided employees an even bigger venue for informal discussions. Technology has indeed opened up so many doors for the society, especially in terms of communication processes. Before, company managers would invite their subordinates to a drink or any sport activity. They do that not merely because they want to unwind, but because they know that they could get more from their employees by being with them in a more informal setting. However, now, due to the advent of blogs, VoIP, instant messaging, wikis, social networking sites, and network CAD, managers and employees don’t necessarily have to go out to share ideas anymore.

One of the important things every company should know is that their success and competitiveness in the global scale also greatly depends on the ability of their employees to use and make the best out of all the technologies available. These technologies allow inter-company and intercultural communications. Thus, company employees can share ideas on a global scale now. In cyberspace, people could talk spontaneously without really being pressured on any output at the end of the day. They just use the conversations they get from other people to improve whatever they have.

Internal blogging, for instance, only started as employees’ way of documenting their progress with work. But since it can be accessed worldwide, employees can now enjoy the benefits of feedbacks. These feedbacks from people all over the world, with varied traditions in their companies and countries, can really contribute a lot in improving the work done. You tell the world what you’re doing, then the world tells you what you can do further. Isn’t that efficient? Of course, text messaging, instant messaging, and social networking are also other venues where spontaneous sharing of ideas can be done.

The price the company has to pay for the benefits the cyberspace provides is the lack of information control. Even if they want to, there’s really no way to control information being published in cyberspace, since “the cyberspace is everyone’s personal space.” This is one risk and fact that they should accept. Blogs can be employees’ outlet, where they can express things that they cannot really express verbally. Some limitations can be done by the management though, like having some “blog ambassadors” who will set some guidelines for the blog content, making sure that it does not violate the company’s privacy.

Note: There is a thick line between blogs and wikis. Blogs are highly opinionated, while wikis are objective collection of information regarding different subject areas.

Social media is such a fad these days. It is mainstream now and is quickly becoming a necessity. If you have a business, and do not have any social media account, or any form of social outreach, you will be viewed equally as the businesses without a website. Since almost all businesses today realize the need to be involved in social media, there is now a frenzy to establish their presence further, which is actually doing more harm than good.

Social media could be associated with oxygen: it’s all around us, whether you are breathing it or not. On a global scale so many conversations are being done through social networking sites. Also, what the ‘wild west’ nature suggests, anyone who has an access to the cyberspace has a voice, and they can be a business’ best friend or worst enemy. For consumers, social media is highly advantageous – you get almost the same speech freedom at the New York Times or Zagat. But if you’re a brand, this social media phenomenon could really be threatening, considering the almost absolute ‘power of the people’ these days. Along with the advent of cyberspace, the power of the people has never been this genuine.

Undoubtedly, to businesses that are very much familiar with social media, what I’m saying isn’t new anymore. I know they fully understand why they need to be involved. However, what they actually lack is the knowledge of how to get involved, or simply the most accurate way of getting involved. The best social media strategies is not just about creating a Facebook Fan page, or a Twitter account, and think your work has been completed. It is so much more than that. Companies who understand that and know the real means to make it happen for their respective businesses are now killing it in the cyberspace.

Believe it or not, the world’s biggest companies ironically have the worst social media strategies. There is a common notion that the money and prestige of these companies are great enough for them to reach out to their consumers, when in fact, their size can still be their biggest stumbling block. The Fortune 500 businesses somewhat fail in the way they perceive the engagement that they need to have with social media. These big companies are used to the segmentation inside their company, that they tend to function like that internally, too. For example, the people from the Investor’s Relations department are solely focusing on the world of IR. What they don’t realize is investor’s relations are just a small part of the overall impact that the brand has to make. Now, when these people from the IR department are tasked to utilize social media in their activities, the initial question they would have is: “How do we make social media work for us?” Such notion eventually becomes the start of their downfall.

There is actually no perfect template of social media strategy that works for all companies. What is effective for Company A, may not even work for Company B. A company may claim that since they already have B2B, so they won’t need Twitter anymore. But a lot of companies are actually earning more from Twitter than B2C.

A paradigm shift is needed in this situation. The social media should not just work for them, but they should also learn to work with social media. Unless these big companies let go of their usual notion of social media, and start looking on a more holistic strategy, it won’t be long until smaller, hungrier, yet savvier companies pass them by.