Operational excellence

Here’s a true story. The boss of a big company decided the company’s major internal comms message of the year was going to be “Operational Excellence”.

So every day “Operational Excellence” were the first words employees saw when they walked into the canteen; employees got e-mails explaining how their team’s operational excellence would be measured, and their manager told them they’d be focusing on how operationally excellent they personally were.

But six months later, when the results were measured, had anyone done anything about it? Of course not.

Oh, except for one team. One team where all the scores had gone up. A team that really had become operationally excellent. What had the manager of that team done differently to succeed where no-one else had?

He’d run a weekly meeting on the subject, just like the other managers, except he’d changed the name of the meeting from “Operational Excellence”, to “Doing Everyday Things, Better”.

Thanks to Neil Taylor at The Writer

Start from the end

The more you read something, the more your brain begins to memorise it. If you re-read a document over and over, eventually your brain knows what’s coming next, so you’re not actually reading the piece anymore, you’re just scanning it.

When you feel you’ve read your copy too many times, help your brain by mixing things up. Read the last sentence first and check for things like sentence structure and grammar. Then read the sentence above the last and do the same. Pull lines out of the copy at random and check for errors. By treating each sentence this way, your brain will break out of scanning mode and you’ll read your copy with a sharper eye.

Leave the office

You’ll never be a great writer of anything if you stare at your desk.

Look at people. Get outside and observe. It’s surprising what you might learn.

For example, did you know Black and Decker don’t sell drills, they sells holes? And deodorants aren’t about keeping dry, they’re about being loved. Computers aren’t about getting more work done, they’re about power. Cars aren’t about transportation, they’re about success. Food isn’t about hunger. Drink isn’t about thirst.

And these days money isn’t the most precious commodity; time is.

Before you open up Microsoft word and start the process of writing, go take a walk.

Outside you see things differently.

Reading out loud

Reading your words out aloud is a great tip for a writer. It helps you check how clear the sentences are and how well the copy flows. Sometimes it is almost impossible to catch some poorly written phrases or sentences without first testing them on the ear. In fact, you may not realise how complicated a sentence is until you’ve read it out aloud.

Hearing the piece also gives you a fresh take on the copy you’ve written. You can be more subjective and hear the words you’ve actually written on the page, rather than those you think are there.

Finally, reading a piece out loud helps you figure out where there may be holes in the piece, where your wording may become a bit cliche’, where transitions falter or where information needs to be broken up and possibly bullet pointed.