Business information: the case for clear communication

Abstract

It is argued that a great deal of money is spent on gathering, indexing, sorting, processing and delivering information, but relatively little on ensuring that the results and implications of this research are communicated to and understood by the organizations that commissioned the work. Examines the ways in which information becomes incomprehensible and how better comprehensibility will assist the process of information management. The “technology industry” is blamed for being responsible for continually pushing back comprehensibility in order to push products, arguing that it has yet to be proved that the phenomenal IT investment by companies over the past 20 years has yielded any real productivity gains. This rush to fuel the IT industry, aided an abetted by the World Wide Web, has led to a jargon-driven workplace and distracted the collective attention of business from the urgent need to get some value out of the vast quantities of information that it has built up. Suggests five practical steps aimed at boosting the value of information with good writing: think of the audience; recognize the limitations of different media; take advantage of the power of stories and storytelling; remember that not everyone is a good writer; and build style guides and processes and apply them. Concludes that good writing is not a management fad and it is not always easy to get people excited about it. However, the effort expended in replacing corporate psychobabble with relevant, well-written pieces of narrative the company’s products will repay the investment handsomely.