2010 WriteMark |
Friday 3 September 2010 |
New Zealand Plain English Awards |
|
Lynda Harris — introductory speech
WriteMark New Zealand Plain English Conference: 16 November 2007
Do you know how wonderful it is to be in front of a captive audience that wants to put plain English into practice? It’s fantastic! Not because plain English is an end in itself but because it’s the vehicle for clear thinking, clear messages, and — the ultimate goal — real communication.
People often think of writing in the same way as they think of breathing — it’s something everyone does and we just take it for granted. To question the way someone writes, especially a more senior person, can be uncomfortable — of course they can write!
But the sobering fact is that in the typing fingertips of your employees lies the reputation of your organisation. You are judged by the quality of your ‘outputs’ — that is, your policy advice, your analysis, your reports, your ministerials, your newsletters, meeting minutes, RFPs and ROIs, your fact sheets, your websites, and more.
Almost everything you do involves writing. Your most significant and long-lasting connection with your clients, and other businesses and other agencies, involves writing! Good writers (and by default good thinkers) are your greatest asset. Helping your people become better writers has got to be one of the single most important, ongoing priorities you could have.
Plain English is simply the name we give to good writing — something that can be read once and understood because the structure, language, and presentation all work together to make the reader’s task easy. Most business writing doesn’t fit that description — in fact if you were to apply the ‘fit for purpose’ clause of the Consumer Guarantees Act, many documents would not pass!
And in age where there’s more information, more regulation, and more documentation of every kind, the clarity and resulting ease that plain English brings is a bottom-line business necessity.
I should add that because plain English is comparatively rare, it’s also a strong business advantage.
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Last year's conference was mostly about the ideal of plain English. It was all about communicating the importance of plain English and what it could do for your organisation and our country. The goal was to inspire you. But we all know that to really achieve something, passion alone isn’t enough.
This year’s theme ‘Reality check’ is literally about making it real. It’s what comes next after you’ve been inspired and caught the passion. It’s about the cold hard reality of trying to change the way your people write to clients, colleagues, the Board, the minister … the reality of tight timeframes, large staff numbers, templates that need changing, competing priorities, budget constraints, and the very real resistance or apathy from people who don’t want to change or who haven’t caught the vision, or who think their writing is just fine.
Have I painted a real enough picture? I hope so, because if you don’t realise the reality, you simply won’t succeed. When you begin a plain English culture project, you’re going to encounter some, if not all, of these.
Everything about this year’s conference is about working with that reality so that you CAN achieve the ideal of plain English — of communicating in a way that truly reflects your purpose, value, and expertise as an organisation.
All of the speakers you’ll be hearing from today will show you how to work with the inevitable challenges and create a new reality, one in which plain English flourishes.
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And now I’d like to ask you a question. Is it possible to have every document throughout your organisation written in plain English? NO. I think you’d agree that it isn’t.
But getting on the pathway of creating a plain English culture … can that make a difference? Absolutely!
For many years, we have seen the positive impact even small changes can make when people take plain English seriously.
When these changes are made in the context of an organisation-wide plain English project, the gains are faster and even more significant. In preparation for this address I asked my colleagues for their plain English success stories. In a very short time they had sent me so many examples I had far too many to use. As I read them over, trying to decide which ones to share it occurred to me that they tended to fall into five groups or categories of success. So what I will share with you today are five kinds of successes that you can expect from creating a plain English culture at your place.
- The first category of stories is perhaps not something you might anticipate — they’re stories about confidence being restored.
One trainer said to me that many people over the years had told her that they felt considerable anxiety about writing, but that almost without exception, plain English training had restored their confidence — plain English was what they intuitively wanted to write but they thought they wouldn’t be taken seriously. When you allow, and actively encourage, people to write in plain English, many people will breathe a sigh of relief and rapidly change their style. - The next category of success stories involves changing expectations. When people know that everyone is expected to adopt plain English principles, they are much more willing to hold each other accountable.
Managers and peer reviewers see a document with different eyes, writers expect to have their document critiqued differently, and managers suddenly have to live up to what they expect from their staff.
A simple story that illustrates changing expectations came from a ministry just the other day, when we found out that someone sent a document back to a researcher and required them to rewrite it in plain English. This may sound simple but it’s a sure sign that expectations are changing. - A third category of success stories involves people challenging old habits.
Once you launch a plain English culture, people are prepared to challenge all sorts of things about your organisation’s documents, from questioning a convoluted heading full of noun strings or why a paper has to be heavily passive, through to being dissatisfied with a template that’s been used for years or standard letters that don’t fit the need anymore. And, believe it or not, that’s a good sign! It shows people are thinking! - The fourth category of success stories is one you might expect — these are stories about an improvement in writing quality that is immediately obvious within your organisation — this is what it’s all about. As an absolute minimum you can expect to see shorter, more reader-focused documents that need far less reworking and score very much better on StyleWriter or any other writing assessment tool.
- And the last category of success stories is what everyone wants — these are stories about outsiders noticing the improved quality of writing. When you get unsolicited positive feedback from a client, when your external audit results go up a grade, when you get positive comments from your minister or from a test group of users, you know something is working.
So, although it may not be possible to get every document written in plain English, when you ask a different question, ‘Is it possible to create a plain English culture?’, the answer is an unequivocal ‘yes!’ Cultural change takes time, but within a year, you will have positive things to report.
And now, for the last few minutes of my talk, I’m going to show you our little ‘movie’ about how to make plain English a reality at your place — how to change the way your people THINK about the way they write.
It all starts with you setting your own plain English standard — a standard of excellence that you expect every document to meet. And then every aspect of your plain English programme revolves around that standard.
You need to TRAIN people to write to the standard, EXPECT that they will, proactively SUPPORT them, and MEASURE the results.
This little movie is about YOU — your people, your managers, your documents, your challenges, your plain English champions…
Oh, and I’d like to think that you’re the one with the cape…
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We are certain that plain English can become the norm in New Zealand. We truly believe that if enough people are aware of that possibility, have an expectation of plain English (as both an employee and a citizen), and know what action they can take to make a difference — it CAN happen.
I’d love to think that you will walk out of here today saying to the person beside you, ‘Plain English IS possible — and I’m going to make it happen’.
Thank you!
Sponsors
We would like to thank the following sponsors for their support in 2010.
