How should I analyze business communication situations?

• Try PAIBOC.

Before you write or speak, you need to understand the situation. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What's at stake-to whom? Think not only about your own needs but about the concerns your boss and your readers will have. Your message will be most effective if you think of the entire organizational context- and the larger context of shareholders, customers, and regulators. When stakes are high, you'll need to take account people's emotional feelings as well as objective facts.
• Should you send a message? Sometimes, especially when you're new on the job, silence is the most tactful response. But be alert for opportunities to learn, to influence, to make your case. You can use communication to build your career.
• What channel should you use? Paper documents and presentations are formal and give you considerable control over the message. E-mail, phone calls, and stopping by someone's office are less formal. Oral channels are better for group decision making, allow misunderstandings to be cleared up more quickly, and seem more personal. Sometimes you may need more than one message, in more than one channel.
• What should you say? Content for a message may not be obvious. How detailed should you be? Should you repeat information that the audience already knows? The answers will depend upon the kind of document, your purposes, your audiences, and the corporate culture. And you'll have to figure these things out for yourself, without detailed instructions.
• How Should you say it? How you arrage your ideas-What comes first, what second, what last-and the words you use shapethe audience's response to what you say.

Use the PAIBOC questions to analyze business communication problems:

P   What are your purposes in writing or speaking?
A  Who is (are) your audience(s)?
I     What information must your message include?
B  What reasons or reader benefits can you use to support your position?
O  What objections can you expect your reader(s) to have? What negative elements of your message must you deemphasize or overcome?
C  How will the context affect the reader's response? Think about your relationship to the reader, morale in the organization, the economy, the time of year, and any special circumstances.

What makes a message effective?

• Good messages meet five criteria.

Good business and administrative writing.

• Is Clear. The meaning the reader gets is the meaning the writer intended. The reader doesn't have go guess.
• Is Complete. All the reader's questions are answered. The reader has enough information to evaluate the message and act on it.
• Is correct. All of the information in the message is accurate. The message is free from errors in punctuation, spelling, grammar, word order, and sentence structure.
• Saves the reader's time. The style, organization, and visual impact of the message help the reader to read, understand, and act on the information as quickly as possible.
• Builds goodwill. The message presents a positive image of the writer and his or her organization. It treats the reader as a person, not a number. It cements a good relationship between the writter and the reader.

  Whether a message meets these five criteria depends on the interactions among the writer, the audience, the purposes of the message, and the situation. No single set of words will work in all possible situations.

Better writing helps you to,

• Save time. Reduce reading time, since comprehension is easier. Eliminate the time now taken to rewrite badly written materials. Reduce the time taken asking writters, "What did you mean?"
• Make your efforts more effective. Increase the number of requests that are answered positively and promptly. -on the first request. Present your points -> to other people in your organization; to clients, customers, and suppliers; to government agencies; to the public-more forcefully.
• Communicate you points more clearly. Reduce the misunderstandings that occur when the reader has to supply missing or unclear information. Make the issues clear, so that disagreements can surface and be resolved more quickly.
• Build goodwill. Build a positive image of your organizaion. Build an image of yourself as a knowledegable, intelligent, capable person.

Don't I know enough about Communication?

• Business Communication differs from other school writing.

 Although both business communication and other school writing demand standard edited English, in other ways the two are very different.

Purpose:

• The Purpose of school writing is usually to show that you have learned the course material and to demonstrate your intelligence.
• The Purpose of business communication is to meet an organizational need. No one will pay you to write something that he or she already knows.

Audience:

• The audiences for school writing are limited: usually just the instructor and the other students. The real audience is "an educated person." Even if the instructor disagrees with your views, if they are well-supported, the paper can earn a good grade. The instructor is paid, in part, to read your papers and will them even if they are boring.
• The audiences for business communication include people both inside and outside the organization. Real audiences pay attention to messages only if they seem important, relevant, and interesting.

Information:

• Information in school writing may be new to you but is rarely new to your instructor.
• Information in business communication is usually new to your reader.(If it isn't, you have to work extra hard to make it interesting.)

Organization:

• School writing often follows the traditional essay form, with a thesis statement up front, paragraphs of evidence, and a final concluding paragraph.
• Business communication is organized to meet the psychological needs of the reader. Most often, the main point comes up front.

Style:

• The style for school writing is often formal. Big words and long sentences and paragraphs are often rewarded.
• Teh style for business communication is friendly, not formal. Short words and a mix of sentence and paragraph lengths are best.

Document Design:

• School writing often rewards long paragraphs. Papers are often double spaced, with no attention to visual design.
• Business people want to be able to skim documents. Headings, lists, and single-spaced paragraphs with double spacing between paragraphs help readers find information quickly.

Visuals:

• Expect for maths, construction, and engineering, few classes expect writing to contain anything other than words.
• Business writers are expected to choose the most effective way to convey information. Even a one-page memo may contain a table, graph, or other visual. You'll be expected to be able to use computer programs to create graphs, visuals, and slides for presentations.

Will I really have to write?

• Yes. A lot.

Claims that people can get by without writing are flawed.

Claim 1: Secretaries will do all my writing.
Reality :  Because of automation and restructuring, secretaries and administrative assistants are likely to handle complex tasks such as training, research, and database management for several managers. Managers are likely to take care of their own writing, data entry, and phone calls.

Claim 2: I'll use form letters or templates when I need to write.
Reality  : A form letter is a prewritten fill-in-the-blank letter designed to fit standard situations. Using a form letter is OK if it's a good letter. But form letters cover only routine situations. The higher you rise, the more frequently you'll face situations that aren't routine and that demand creative solutions.

Claim 3: I'm being hired as an accountant, not a writer.
Reality  : Almost every entry-level professional or managerial job requires you to write e-mail messages, speak to small groups, and write paper documents. People who do these things well are more likely to be promoted beyond the entry level.

Claim 4: I'll just pick up the phone.
Reality : Important phone calls require follow-up letters, memos, or e-mail messages. People in organizations put things in writing to make themselves visible, to create a record, to convey their own messages more effectively. "If it isn't in writting, "says a manger at one company, "it didn't happen. "Writing is an essential way to make yourself visible, to let your accomplishments be known.

Business Communication, Management, and Success

To Learn How to,

• Begin to understand the organizational purposes and context for your message.
• Begin to analyze business communication situations.
• Begin to analyze your audiences.
• Begin to develop effective messages.
• Think Creatively.

Start by asking these questions:

1. Will I really have to write?
2. Don't I know enough about communication?
3. What does communication accomplish?
4. How much does correspondence cost?
5. What makes a message effective?
6. How should I analyze business communication situations?

Work requires communication. People communicate to plan products and services: hire, train, and motivate workers: coordinate manufacturing and delivery: persuade customers to buy; and bill them for the sale. For many business, nonprofit, community, and government organizations, created and delivered by communication. In every organization, communication is the way people get their points across, get work done, and get recognized for their contributions.

Unless you have a fairy godmother, you'll need to know how to communicate.

  Communication takes many forms. Verbal Communication, or communication that uses words,. includes

• Face-to-face or phone conversations
• Meetings
• E-mail and voice-mail messages
• Letters and memos
• Reports

  Nonverbal communication does not use words. Examples include,

• Pictures
• Company logos
• Gestures and body language
• Who sits where at a meeting
• How long someone keeps a visitor waiting

  Even in your first job, you'll communicate. You'll read information: you'll listen to instructins; you'll ask questions. You may solve problems with other workers in teams. In a manufacturing company, hourly workers travel to a potential customer to make oral sales presentations. In an insurance company, hourly workers travel to a potential customer to make oral sales peresentations. In an insurance company, clerks answer customers' letters. Even "entry-level" jobs require high-level skills in reasoning, mathematics, and communicating. As a result, communication ability consistently ranks first among the qualities that employers look for in college graduates.

  Communication affects all levels of work. Training specialists Brad Humphrey and Jeff Stokes identify communication skills as being among the most important for modern supervisors. Andrew Posner, a career counselor, advises that employees looking to make a career change need such "transferable skills" as the ability to "analyze, write, persuade, and manage."

  Employers clearly want employees who communicate well, yet a staggering 40 million people in the United States alone have limited literacy skills, including some college graduates. According to one report by the College Board's National Commission on Writing, states spend more than $200 million annually on remedial writing training for their employees, and corporations may spend $3.1 billion to fix problems from writing deficiencies; two-thirds fo private-sector employers surveyed said writing was an important responsibility for employees.

  Because writing skills are so valuable, good writers earn more. Linguist Stephen Reder has found that among people with two of four year degrees, workers in the top 20% of writing ability earn, on average, more than three times as much as workers whose writing falls into the worst 20%.

  The conclusion is simple: Good Communication skills are vital in today's workplace. Technology, especially through e-mail, instant messaging, and cell phones, is making the globe a smaller and busier place, one where messages must be understood immediately. Traditional paper messages must be understood immediately. Traditional paper messages flourish, even as electronic channels expand our ability to reach more people. The better an employee's communication skills are, the better his or her chance for success.