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.