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Re: Convincing leaders and management of the value of technical editing

Subject: Re: Convincing leaders and management of the value of technical editing
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 14:20:16 -0800


TiggerNibroc -at- gmail -dot- com wrote:

Pat, Mike, and I want to follow up on this topic. We want to hear your
success stories and your less-than-successful stories when you went to
management or the client to advocate for editing. What worked? What did
not work as well? What resources did you use to support your case? For
instance, are there articles, tools, or Web sites that helped you convince
others of the value of technical editing?

I don't think that you can prove the value of technical editing - or technical writing, for that matter - in the abstract.

The only way that I have ever convinced anyone of the value of these positions is by proving my own competence and usefulness. When people realize that company documents look more professional, or that they don't have to hunt for corporate logos or boilerplate descriptions of the company, or that good documentation reduces the need for customer support, then they realize the value. Since anyone can claim to be a technical writer or editor, and many people have met incompetent ones, I don't see how the situation could be different.

Admittedly, explaining the positions sometimes helps. After all, many people in management have no clear idea what these positions involve. Yet even that isn't reliable. Most people can understand that professionally edited documents can help the company image, but, that seems such an obvious statement that if you expand on it much, they are likely to react as though you are talking down to them.

In the end, what will convince them is finding their work easier, or receiving compliments from outside the company on the quality of their documents. You can angle for opportunities for these things to happen - and then deliver - but I don't think you can do anything else. If the situation were simple enough to reduce to a series of steps, then the problem wouldn't exist in the first place.

--
Bruce Byfield
http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield

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