Re[2]: Effective business communications

[Janet_Valade -at- SYSTECH -dot- COM]

>I had a manager like that once.  She made the same amount of markup
>any time you handed her a document.  The density of red ink was
>completely unrelated to the document itself.

>The short-term solution was to show her a document as few times
>as possible, and only at conveninet times.  The long-term solution
>was to find another manager.

     Another short-term solution is to submit documents with an appropriate
     number of mistakes included.  In this way, you control the changes she
     will make as she fulfills her need to apply red ink.  This works well
     with dissertation committees also.

     I'm kidding.  Sort of.  What I really mean is that there is a tendency
     to spend hours polishing a document to perfection before passing it to
     a person like this, hoping to have it so perfect that she won't make
     any changes.  This may be hopeless.  Some people believe that their
     job "requires" them to make changes; otherwise someone might think
     they aren't needed and downsize them.  In this situation, it is
     perhaps better to pass un-polished documents to such persons and let
     them spend their hours polishing it up, rather than you spend your
     time polishing it only for them to mess it up anyway.

     Janet

     Janet Valade
     Technical Writer
     Systech Corp, San Diego, CA
     janet_valade -at- systech -dot- com

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