Practical Guide to Effective Written Communication

Thomas P. Koehler, PMP, PMO Consultant, Computer Associates

Why We Communicate language. It allows a less threatening environment to work out

troublesome issues. Where would modern project management
You as a project manager spend a large portion of your time com- be without the insight gained during side discussions next to the
municating to ensure the success of your project. You require the water cooler or coffee pot? Even a phone conversation is more
cooperation of others to make the decisions and complete the personal than a memo or email.
tasks. You must communicate so others clearly understand their This paper by no means advocates eliminating these crucial
role in the project and complete their areas of responsibility in means of verbal communications and personal interaction.
a timely fashion. Your objective is to get action from others. However, I strongly advocate using written communications to
The PMBOK® Guide discusses many areas, which require supplement not only formal but also informal discussions. A
communication. This paper deals with the day-to-day, often in- brief, one paragraph email can summarize and emphasize an
formal, communications so crucial in project management. We agreement reached in the hallway.
communicate to inform or solicit input as part of the decision- Written communication is crucial to document all aspects of
making process. We communicate to build a consensus among an ongoing project. It is part of the permanent record and will
the project team or to resolve conflict. In the end, we commu- read the same six months later as when it was written. It enables
nicate to assign tasks and responsibilities. the project team to review decisions later on and can bring new
No matter what the reasons are for communication, it should team members up to speed quickly and objectively. The project
be for a purpose. We expect our communication to result in ef- manager must document any critical project issues in writing to
fecting the way our project progresses. Most of the time, this re- establish the permanent record.
quires action on the recipient’s part. Bottom line, we are tying to You can forward written communication without altering its
sell the recipients to perform a desired action. meaning. If the matter calls for escalation, you can forward the

When Written Communication Is Appropriate Exhibit 2. Written Communication Provides a More

Permanent Record and Can Avoid
Informal verbal communication has its place to build personal Misunderstandings
relationships and to be able to better read the other person’s body

Exhibit 1. Errors in Communication Can Easily Lead

to Major Embarrassment or Worse

Proceedings of the Project Management Institute Annual Seminars & Symposium

November 1–10, 2001 • Nashville,Tenn., USA
message without accidentally altering or distorting the meaning sues, it causes me a problem with the way I work. It is easy for
and misrepresenting the facts as they were presented to you. me to accidentally ignore the second issue in your email after I
How often do we wish we could take back words we said? You completed the first item and filed the email away.
have an opportunity to review what you write before you sent
Address the Reader’s Issues
it. You can massage your message to make sure it is just perfect.
You can even try the message out on a coworker. Moreover, it If we do not achieve our objective, we wasted our time commu-
provides you with a record in cases were you warned of poten- nicating. Therefore, it is in your best interest (career, financial,
tial problems and the responsible parties did not take the ap- personal, etc.) that the reader reads and acts upon the message
propriate action. appropriately.
This paper addresses only the short written communications That means that you write for the benefit of the reader, not
typically expressed as letters, memos and, more often, email. It your benefit. Show the readers what is at stake for them by writ-
does address more formal documents like legal contracts, dis- ing in terms of the reader’s interests, requirements and issues and
sertations, theses, technical documentation, presentations, by keeping the reader’s concerns in mind.
novel, etc.

How to Get the Message Across

Who Is the Target Audience?
Talk Directly to the Reader
Define the Audience
It is important to speak directly to the reader. Preferably, the
Most of the time, our audience is obvious. These are peers, sub- memo or email should start with the word “you.” This immedi-
ordinates, supervisors, project team member, project owners, or ately sets the tone that this may be of importance to the reader.
stakeholders. If the reader only reads one sentence, what should this sentence
However, our message can have an unexpected audience. The be? It has to contain a summary of the message as well as the ac-
receiver can forward the message to their boss, all the way to the tion you want the reader to take. This should be the first sentence.
company CEO. Our message can be subpoenaed in a lawsuit. Just Yes, that is contradictory to what you learned in school. Think
remember the supposedly internal emails that hurt Microsoft of it this way. You cannot force anybody to read your message.
during the antitrust trial. How would you feel if your last email Once they get bored, they will stop and discard your writing. You
were published in a newspaper? What if the client sees the mes- loose! You have about two seconds, which is about the maximum
sage you intended for internal distribution only? Has a client ever time the reader will take to decide whether to read or ignore your
shown you a document, which was clearly not intended for their message. So, make sure the reader gets the meat of your issue
eyes? within these two seconds.
If you think this sounds paranoid, think again. The “leak” Once you got his or her attention, you have about 30 seconds
often is not even intentional. How easy is it to accidentally send to get the rest of your message across. That is the length of a typ-
a message to the wrong email recipient? Have you ever stapled a ical commercial. That is it. Odds are, the reader will be inter-
memo to the wrong paperwork? rupted before the 30 seconds are up. It is your job to ensure the
The best protection against any of these problems is to always reader gets all the info needed. That means do not waste your
write in a professional manner. Avoid derogatory language and time and effort on tangents or background. Once you got your
keep your and your company’s image in mind. Then, you do not message across, the reader can always get back to you to ask for
ever have to be embarrassed by one of your messages showing more. However, the first message must be sufficiently self-con-
up in an unexpected place. tained so the reader can make, at least, a preliminary decision on
whether to pursue your issue or not.
Understand the Audience
It is important to ensure the message is relevant to the recip-
To start out with, forget everything your high school English ient. Do not send the message to dozens of people because you
teacher told you. In order to be successful, you need action based are not sure who should get it. You will acquire the reputation of
on the message. That is all that counts. So, forget about suspense wasting time. That will distract from the important messages that
and building up to the ultimate climax. Put yourself in your you need to get through. It can be so annoying when you respond
reader’s shoes and write short and to the point. Understand to a message sent to a long list of recipients by selecting “Reply
what types of constraints are on his or her daily activities. You to All” just to acknowledge the receipt of the message. If every-
need to present the information to fit the reader’s style. one on the distribution list does that, they immediately create
Many people work in piles in one way or another. For exam- hundreds of messages, which are meaningless, but still require
ple, I work off my email inbox. Items stay in my inbox until I fin- the recipients to sort through.
ish with them. Then, I move them to a more permanent location. It is crucial that not only your message is clear, but that you
Therefore, if you send me one email, which has two separate is- spell out what action you expect the reader to take. Do not make

Proceedings of the Project Management Institute Annual Seminars & Symposium

November 1–10, 2001 • Nashville,Tenn., USA
them guess. Odds are, they guess wrong. If you want the reader What is the Best Format for Optimal Results?
to approve your approach, make sure to say so. Avoid “FYI”
messages. That is not an action. If the message is important, then
you want the recipient to read the message and act on the con- Use a Proper Structure
tents. If it is not of importance, then do not send it. As mentioned before, we are not writing a novel. You can find the
Make sure to clearly delineate between fact and opinion. You best examples on how to structure a message by reading a high-
want to provide your reader the facts to base a decision on. It may quality newspaper. The main point is in the headline and the first
be your opinion that this is a good decision. Again, do not make paragraph. As you continue reading, you obtain more detail. You
the reader guess what is fact. Even worse, do not disguise your can stop reading any time and still have gotten the gist of the ar-
opinion as fact. That will hurt your credibility in the end. ticle. Another example is direct mail pieces. The authors of these
Take Your Time to Write messages have made a science out of how to get your attention
and keep it.
If you do not have time to write it right, do not bother wasting That means you start with the most important aspect of the
your time. The more important the message, the shorter and message. Background and detail go in the back. You do not build
concise you want the message. There are no bonus points for the up to the most important part, but order your thoughts by de-
longest memo or email. Quality is not proportional to length. creasing importance. It is OK to keep the message interesting, just
You win if the reader understands your message. If the reader for leave out the suspense.
any reason misses the point, you loose. It is truly that simple. Write with plenty of white space. If there are three points, put
Therefore, make sure you construct your message carefully. them in bullets. Highlight the action you want the reader to
Trim off any unnecessary fluff, tangents, and words that are not take. The reader is often drawn to bold words. However, if you
directly required to bring your point home. Be short and concise. have too much text in bold, it looses its benefits. Make sure the
It is OK to spend a day on a two-paragraph email. Write it and bold text is self-contained so that the reader does not have to
then let it sit for a few hours. Read it again and evaluate how you hunt to find the text to complete the highlighted portion.
can improve it. Show it to a coworker and watch their impres- Keep the format light and consistent (not too many type faces,
sion reading it. font sizes, etc). DO NOT WRITE IN ALL UPPER CASE. It is con-
Never send the message in anger. Once sent, the permanency sidered obnoxious and the equivalent of yelling. By the way,
you desire is hard to undo. You may want to let it sit overnight most people will read a postscript, although that is not a com-
and read it again in the morning, just to make sure that you got mon part of an email message.
it perfect. If it is that important, it can wait that additional time.
Once you are done, make sure to create a meaningful subject Use Good English
line. It has to say enough to ensure the recipient will, at least, open Make sure to show that the message is important to you by tak-
the rest of the message. Some email clients, like Microsoft ing the time to write with proper spelling and grammar. With the
Outlook, have a three-line message preview. Make sure that this modern tools (see below), there is no excuse for poor English.
all-important first sentence fits into this preview area. Why should the reader be interested in your issue when you send
Consider How the Reader Sees You the message that it is not important enough to you to spend the
time on the details?
What kind of impression do you want to give when you write? As In general, it is beneficial to write short sentences. Under no
project managers, we want to be perceived to be in control. This circumstances do you want to force the reader to have to reread
means we want to make sure we take ownership and clearly assign text because it is too convoluted. It is a good idea to write at most
responsibilities. We especially do not want to appear as passing the at a 10th grade level. This is not to insult the intelligence of the
buck. Along the same line, we want to show we are proactive in- reader, but to make it easier on them to comprehend the message.
stead of reacting to the whims of the situation or environment. Avoid jargon or fancy words. They may force the reader to have
It is important that we show that we are organized. This to stop and think about their meaning or, even worse, miss the
goes hand in hand with being in control. It is hard to project point. Remember that the message may end up with people
the proper image if our writing is disorganized and hard to fol- who are not necessarily as experienced with the technology or
low. We need to show that we are knowledgeable of the issues subject matter as you are. True experts prove their grasp of the
and are not just paraphrasing (especially incorrectly) what subject matter by their ability to express even complicated issues
others tell us. so nonprofessionals can understand them.
Our writing style will say at least as much about how the reader One key suggestion for effective writing is to avoid passive
perceives us as the words. The writing style becomes the equivalent voice and, even worse, the use of “one” or “someone.” This may
of the body language in verbal communication. Sloppy writing will be all right for academic dissertations. A sentence like “One
project the image that we do not care. Incoherent writing can indi- needs to write documentation” or “The documentation needs to
cate that we do not understand the bottom line. Bad grammar and be written” does not convey ownership. Make sure that you as-
misspelled words show it is not important enough to get it right. sign required actions directly to the appropriate person.

Proceedings of the Project Management Institute Annual Seminars & Symposium

November 1–10, 2001 • Nashville,Tenn., USA
Exhibit 3.The Spelling and Grammar Checkers Exhibit 5. Outline Mode Helps Organize the
Provide Continuous Feedback Document and Enforce Consistent Format

number of choices to correct the word. Even more powerful is the

green line, which indicates grammar errors. This can be mad-
Exhibit 4. Readability Statistics Show How Difficult dening at the beginning. Often, no matter how hard you try, you
it May Be to Read Your Message cannot get the green line to disappear. At times, the only solution
is to rewrite a whole paragraph. That is good. As a result, your
message will be clearer and more concise.
Once you wrote your message, perform a spell and grammar
check and request readability statistics. You may have to enable
this in the options dialog box first. The results can be eye open-
ing. Use the Microsoft Word online help to obtain a detailed ex-
planation regarding how the program calculates the statistics.
After you rephrased some of the text, run the statistics again to
find out whether the changes improved readability or made it
worse. You can even highlight a sentence or a few paragraphs and
find out the statistics for a subset of your document.
It will require quite a bit of effort to improve the readability
of your document. It is time worthwhile and the features of
Microsoft Word can greatly help you along the way.
For improving consistency in formatting, the outline feature
of Microsoft Word can provide plenty of help. It provides a
means to organize your thoughts and easily rearrange whole
sections. It is easy to ensure consistency of headings. Then, you
can apply consistent formatting to the whole document, in-
cluding numbering.
Microsoft Outlook
Where Are the Right Tools?
Microsoft Outlook allows the use of Microsoft Word as email ed-
itor. This means that you can have all the writing assistance from
Microsoft Word Microsoft Word available to ensure high-quality emails as well.
Microsoft Word has some features, which can greatly help you Remember that some of your recipients may not be using the
with your writing skills. Most users consider these an annoyance same software to view the email as you are. That means that you
and turn the features off. Keeping the features on provide you in- may loose formatting, such as fonts, bullets, bold or font size.
stant feedback on your writing skills and, over time, will help you Your chances of maintaining the format improve if you instruct
improve them. Microsoft Outlook to send messages in HTML format. That is
The greatest assistance is the spelling and grammar checker. A the same format used by the World Wide Web.
red line under a word tells you that the spelling is incorrect. Left- Microsoft Outlook allows you to request read receipts. This al-
click on the word and the pop-up menu presents you with a lows you to check who read the message without having to

Proceedings of the Project Management Institute Annual Seminars & Symposium

November 1–10, 2001 • Nashville,Tenn., USA
bother the recipients. An option even correlates the receipts
with the original message and removes the receipts from your
inbox. You can open the sent message and view who read the
message and when from the “tracking” tab.

Conclusion

Understanding how people read in today’s fast pace environment

enables us to tailor the message to the reader and, thus, greatly
improve the quality and effectiveness of our message. Make sure
you show you are in control and make it easy for the reader to
process and respond to your message. Using modern tools for
written communication, such as email, can greatly enhance the
effectiveness of the project manager.

References
Brians, Paul. Common Errors in English. http://www.wsu.edu/~bri-
ans/errors/index.html.
Chambers, Dennis 1998. The Agile Manager’s Guide to: Writing To
Get Action. Bristol, VT: Velocity Business Publishing.
Dutton, Dennis. 1998. Winners of the Fourth Bad Writing Contest.
http://www.cybereditions.com/aldaily/bwc.htm
Project Management Institute. 2000. A Guide to the Project
Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide – 2000 Edition).
Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.

Proceedings of the Project Management Institute Annual Seminars & Symposium

November 1–10, 2001 • Nashville,Tenn., USA

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