2. Planning Business Messages
Chapter 4
Planning Business Messages
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3. Learning Objectives Describe the three-step writing process
Explain why it’s important to analyze a communication situation in order to define your purpose and profile your audience before writing a message
Discuss information gathering options for simple messages, and identify three attributes of quality information
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, you will be able to do the following:
Describe the three-step writing process
Explain why it’s important to analyze a communication situation in order to define your purpose and profile your audience before writing a message
Discuss information gathering options for simple messages, and identify three attributes of quality information
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4. Learning Objectives
List the factors to consider when choosing the most appropriate medium for a message
Explain why good organization is important to both you and your audience, and list the tasks involved in organizing a message
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, you will be able to do the following:
List the factors to consider when choosing the most appropriate medium for a message
Explain why good organization is important to both you and your audience, and list the tasks involved in organizing a message
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5. The Three-Step Process
Analyze Situation
Gather Information
Select Medium
Get Organized
Revise
Produce
Proofread
Distribute
Adapt to
the Audience
Compose
the Message
Planning
Completing
Writing
Planning business messages. To plan any message, first analyze the situation by defining your purpose and developing a profile of your audience. With that in mind, you can gather information that will meet your audience’s needs. Next, select the right medium (oral, written, or electronic) to deliver your message. With those three factors in place, you are ready to organize the information by defining your main idea, limiting your scope, selecting an approach, and outlining your content. Planning business messages is the focus of this chapter.
Writing business messages. Once you have planned your message, adapt to your audience with sensitivity, relationship skills, and style. Then you are ready to compose your message by choosing strong words, creating effective sentences, and developing coherent paragraphs. Writing business messages is discussed in Chapter 5.
Completing business messages. After writing your first draft, revise your message to make sure it is clear, concise, and correct. Next produce your message, giving it an attractive, professional appearance. Proofread the final product for typos, spelling errors, and other mechanical problems. Finally, distribute your message using the best combination of personal and technological tools. Completing business messages is discussed in Chapter 6.
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6. Optimizing Your Time 50% Planning 25% Writing 25% Completing
The more you use the three-step writing process, the easier and faster it will become. You will also get better at allotting your time for each task during a writing project. As a general rule, set aside roughly 50 percent of your time for planning, 25 percent of your time for writing, and 25 percent for completing. Of course, the time allotment can vary significantly from project to project. Start with the “ split” as a guideline and use your best judgment for each project.
As soon as the need to create a message appears, inexperienced communicators are often tempted to dive directly into writing. However, even a few minutes of planning can save hours of rework and frustration later on. Planning your message reduces indecision as you write, and it reduces revision during the completing step. Careful planning can also save you from embarrassing blunders that could hurt your company or your career. With a solid plan in place, you are ready to move forward with analyzing your situation.
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7. Analyzing the Situation
Who is the
audience?
What is the
purpose?
A successful message starts with a clear purpose that connects the sender’s needs with the audience’s needs. Identifying your purpose and your audience is usually a straightforward task for simple, routine messages. However, this task can be more demanding as situations become more complex. If you launch directly into writing without clarifying both your purpose and your audience, you will waste time and energy, and you will probably generate a less effective message.
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8. Defining Your Purpose General Purpose Specific Purpose To Inform
To Persuade
To Collaborate
Your Goals
Audience Actions
Audience Thoughts
All business messages have a general purpose: to inform, to persuade, or to collaborate with your audience. Business messages also have a specific purpose. To help you define the specific purpose of your message, ask yourself what you hope to accomplish with your message and what your audience should do or think after receiving your message.
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9. Profiling Your Audience
Knowledge Level
Expectations
Probable Reaction
Primary Members
Size and Location
Composition
The more you know about your audience, their needs, and their expectations, the more effectively you will be able to communicate with them. Analyzing your audience involves the following steps:
Identify the primary audience. If you can reach the decision makers or opinion molders in your audience, other audience members will fall in line.
Determine the size of your audience. A report for wide distribution requires a more formal style, organization, and format than one directed to three or four people in your department.
Determine the composition of the audience. Look for common denominators that tie audience members together across differences in culture, education, status, or attitude. Include evidence that touches on everyone’s area of interest.
Gauge your audience’s level of understanding. If audience members share your general background, they will understand your material without difficulty. If not, you must educate them. Include only enough information to accomplish your objective.
Project your audience’s expectations and preferences. Will members of your audience expect complete details or will a summary of the main points suffice? Do they want an or will they expect a formal memo?
Estimate your audience’s probable reaction. If you expect a favorable response, state conclusions and recommendations up front and offer minimal evidence. If you expect skepticism, introduce conclusions gradually, and include more evidence.
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10. Audience Analysis Notes
Figure 4.2 Example of Using Audience Analysis to Plan a Message
For simple, routine messages, you usually don’t need to analyze your audience in depth. However, for
complex messages or messages for indifferent or hostile audiences, take the time to study their information
Start with specific purpose of your needs and potential reactions to your message.
message to make sure you focus your analysis. Identify the most important
members of your audience.
Briefly describe the characteristics of your primary audience members,
including how much they know about the subject.
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11. Gathering Quality Information
Consider Audience
Perspective
Review Company
Documents
Talk with Stakeholder
And Colleagues
When you have a clear picture of your audience, your next step is to assemble the information to include in your message. For simple messages, you may already have all the information at hand, but for more complex messages, you may need to do considerable research and analysis before you’re ready to begin writing.
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12. Selecting the Best Medium
Oral
Written
Electronic
Visual
Selecting the best medium for your message can make the difference between effective and ineffective communication. Although media categories have become increasingly blurred in recent years, for the sake of discussion, you can think of media as being oral, written, visual, or electronic (which often combines several media types).
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13. Oral Communication Conversations Interviews Speeches Presentations
Meetings
Primary oral media include face-to-face conversations, interviews, speeches, and in-person presentations and meetings. By giving communicators the ability to see, hear, and react to each other, traditional oral media are useful for encouraging people to ask questions, make comments, and work together to reach a consensus or decision.
Of course, if you do not want a lot of questions or interaction, oral media can be an unwise choice. However, consider the audience carefully before deciding to limit interaction by choosing a different medium.
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14. Written Communication
Memos
Letters
Reports
Blogs
Written media take many forms, from traditional memos to glossy reports that rival magazines in production quality. Even though electronic media have replaced many printed messages, the print medium still has a place in business today.
Memos are used for the routine, day-to-day exchange of information within an organization. Because of their open format and informal method of delivery, memos are less private than letters.
Letters are written messages sent to recipients outside the organization. In addition to conveying a particular message, they perform an important public relations function in fostering good working relationships with customers, suppliers, and others.
Reports and proposals are usually longer than memos and letters, although both can be created in memo or letter format. These documents come in a variety of lengths, ranging from a few pages to several hundred, and are usually formal in tone.
Electronically Written Communication In many organizations, social networking, IM, , blogs, and other electronic media have largely replaced paper memos.
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15. Visual Media Figure 4.5 Visual Media
Visual media, in which a limited amount of text supports one or more dominant graphical elements, have
become increasingly popular in business communication. Infographics, such as this example, try to convey
facts and figures in a more visually appealing way than traditionally formatted charts or tables.
The importance of visual elements in business communication continues to grow. Traditional
business messages rely primarily on text, with occasional support from graphical
elements such as charts, graphs, or diagrams to help illustrate points discussed in the text.
However, many business communicators are discovering the power of messages in which
the visual element is dominant and supported by small amounts of text. For the purposes
of this discussion, you can think of visual media as any format in which one or more visual
elements play a central role in conveying the message content (see Figure 4.5).
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16. Electronic Media Oral Media Written Media Visual Media
When you want to make a powerful impression, using electronic media can increase excitement and visual appeal with computer animation, video, and music. Here is a quick overview of the major electronic media now used in business:
Electronic versions of oral media include telephone calls, teleconferencing (when three or more people join the same call), voic messages, and audio recordings such as compact discs and podcasts.
Electronic versions of written media range from and instant messages to blogs, websites, and wikis.
Electronic versions of visual media can include electronic presentations, computer animation, and video.
The growth of electronic communication options is both a blessing and a curse for business communicators. On the one hand, you have more tools than ever before to choose from, with more ways to deliver business messages. On the other hand, the sheer range of choices can complicate your job because you often need to choose among multiple media and you need to know how to use each medium successfully.
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17. Choosing the Medium Message Urgency Cost Factors Audience Preferences
Media
Richness
Limitations
Formality
When choosing a medium for your message, consider how your message is affected by the following factors:
Media richness. This is a medium's ability to (1) convey a message through more than one informational cue, (2) facilitate feedback, and (3) establish personal focus. The richest medium is face-to-face communication.
Message formality. Your choice of media governs the style and tone of your message. For example, a printed letter is likely to be perceived as a more formal gesture than an message.
Media limitations. Every medium has limitations. For instance, IM is perfect for communicating simple, straightforward messages, but it is ineffective for sending complex messages.
Urgency. Some media establish a connection with the audience faster than others, so choose wisely if your message is urgent. If a message is not urgent, choose a medium that allows people to respond at their convenience.
Cost. This is both a real factor and a perceived nonverbal signal. Distributing an interactive multimedia report on DVD is more costly than attaching an MS Word version of the report to an message. While a prospective customer may expect a multimedia presentation, your manager would question the cost-effectiveness of such media for routine internal reports.
Audience preferences. Make sure to consider which media your audience expects or prefers. For example, the United States, Canada, and Germany emphasize written messages. In contrast, Japan emphasizes oral messages—perhaps because its high-context culture carries so much of the message in nonverbal cues and “between-the-lines” interpretation.
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18. Recognizing the Importance of Organization
The Audience
The Writer
Understanding
Acceptance
Time
Efficiency
Energy
Career
Good organization helps your audience in several ways:
Helps them understand your message. By making your main point clear at the outset, your well-organized message will satisfy your audience’s need for information.
Helps them accept your message. Even when your message is logical, you need to select and organize your points in a diplomatic way.
Saves them time. Well-organized messages are efficient. They contain only relevant ideas, and they are brief.
In addition to saving time and energy for your readers, good organization saves you time and consumes less of your creative energy. Furthermore, good organizational skills are good for your career because they help you develop a reputation as a clear thinker who cares about your reader. .
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19. Defining the Main Idea Overall Subject of the Message
Specific Statement
About the Topic
The
Topic
The
Main Idea
The topic of your message is the overall subject, such as employee insurance claims. Your main idea is a specific statement about the topic of your message, such as your belief that a new web-based claim filing system would reduce costs for the company and reduce reimbursement delays for the employees.
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20. Defining Topic & Main Idea
General Purpose
Example of Specific Purpose
Example of Topic
Example of Main idea
To Inform
Teach customer service representatives how
to edit and expand the technical support wiki
Technical support wiki
Careful, thorough edits and additions to
the wiki help the entire department provide
better customer support.
Excerpt from Table 4.2
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21. Limiting Message Scope
The scope of this blog post by the U.S. Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration is limited to a single, distinct idea: correcting the misconception that foreign companies invest in the United States primarily because of government incentives such as tax breaks.
Figure 4.7 Limiting the Scope of a Message
The scope of your message is the range of information you present, the overall length, and the level of detail—all of which need to correspond to your main idea. The length of some business messages has a preset limit, whether from a boss’s instructions, the technology you’re using, or a time frame such as individual speaker slots during a seminar.
Whatever the length of your message, limit the number of major supporting points
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22. Choosing the Approach Direct Approach Indirect Approach
Audience Reaction
Message Length
Message Type
Once you have defined your ideas and outlined or diagrammed the structure of your message, you are ready to decide on the sequence you will use to present your points.
The direct approach. The main idea (such as a recommendation, conclusion, or request) comes first, followed by the evidence. Use this approach when your audience will be neutral about your message or pleased to hear from you.
The indirect approach. The evidence comes first, and the main idea comes later. Use this approach when your audience may be displeased or may resist what you have to say.
Your choice of a direct or an indirect approach depends on several factors:
Audience reaction: positive, neutral, or negative
Message length: short (memos and letters) or long (reports, proposals, and presentations)
Message type: routine and positive messages, negative messages, or persuasive messages
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23. Outlining the Content First Major Point Second Major Point
First subpoint
Second subpoint
Examples & Evidence
Detail
Third subpoint
Second Major Point
Figure 4.9 Organizing Your Thoughts with a Clear Outline
No matter what outlining format you use, think through your major supporting points and the examples and
evidence that can support each point.
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24. Organization Chart Outlines
The Main Idea
I. Major Point
II. Major Point
III. Major Point
A. Evidence
B. Evidence
C. Evidence
Another way to visualize the structure of your message is by creating a message “organization chart” similar to the charts used to show a company’s management structure. The main idea is shown in the highest-level box and, like a top executive, establishes the big picture. The lower-level ideas, like lower-level employees, provide the details. All the ideas are logically organized into divisions of thought, just as a company is organized into divisions and departments.
Using a visual chart has several benefits. Charts can help you (1) see the different levels of ideas and how the parts fit together, (2) develop new ideas, and (3) restructure your information flow.
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25. Providing Examples & Evidence
Type of Detail
Example
Comment
Facts and figures
Sales are strong this month. We have two new contracts worth
$5 million and a good chance of winning another worth $2.5
million.
Enhances credibility more than any other type, but can
become boring if used excessively.
Visuals
Graphs, charts, tables, photographs, drawings, infographics,
data visualization, video)
Helps audience grasp the key points about sets of data
or visualize connections between ideas.
Table 4.3
After you’ve defined the main idea and identified major supporting points, think about
examples and evidence that can confirm, illuminate, or expand on your supporting points.
Choose examples and evidence carefully so that these elements support your overall message
without distracting or overwhelming your audience. One good example, particularly
if it is conveyed through a compelling story (see the next section), is usually more powerful
than several weaker examples. Similarly, a few strong points of evidence are usually more
persuasive than a large collection of minor details. Keep in mind that you can back up your
major supporting points in a variety of ways, depending on the subject material and the
available examples and evidence (see Table 4.3).
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26. Storytelling as a Way to Organize Message
Figure 4.11 Storytelling as a Way to Organize Messages
Many companies now use Facebook’s timeline feature to create visual stories of their founding and early years.
Source: Copyright © 2012 by General Electric, Inc.
This image conveys the notion that GE has been an industrial powerhouse for nearly a century and a half.
Opening the story with an image of Thomas Edison, one of the most
iconic inventors in American history, reinforces the message that
GE was built on “a tradition of innovation.”
The accompanying text lists other key technological advances that GE
pioneered or participated in. A key reason storytelling can be so effective is that stories help readers and listeners imagine themselves living through the experience of the person in the story. Chip Heath of Stanford University and his brother, Dan Heath of Duke University, have spent years exploring the question of why some ideas “stick” and others disappear. One of their conclusions is that ideas conveyed through storytelling tend to thrive because stories “put knowledge into a framework that is more lifelike, more true to our day-to-day existence.”11
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27. Summary of Objectives
This section covered the following elements involved in Organizing Your Information:
The three-step writing process
Why it’s important to analyze a communication situation in order to define your purpose and profile your audience before writing a message
Information gathering options for simple messages and attributes of quality information
Factors to consider when choosing the most appropriate medium for a message
Why good organization is important to both you and your audience and the tasks involved in organizing a message
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28. Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall