It’s easy and common to play with sand, sifting it through your fingers, flinging it around, mounding it in loose piles. Loose sand is ubiquitous, free, and almost worthless. Making that sand valuable is neither easy nor common. Only intense processing and uncommonly skillful manipulation can transform free sand into beautifully transparent, high-value glass.
Information, like sand, is free, common, and instantly available. In the Internet age, it’s easily sifted, flung from one website to another, and confused with high-value communication. However, according to Chicago Sun Times columnist Sidney J. Harris,
“The … words ‘information’ and ‘communication’ are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.”
Only intense processing and uncommonly skillful manipulation can transform information into beautifully transparent, high-value communication: communication that makes sure your message gets through.
Your Business Depends on Written Communication
You really know your stuff. But what happens when other people need to know what you know? You very often have a communication mismatch. Communicating knowledge or expertise in person, on paper, or online is not always as simple as just “talking it over,” “writing it down,” or “putting it up on the web.”
When required information doesn’t get through from the experts to the audience, what we have, boys and girls, is a failure to communicate. People want to know what your stuff can do for them. They want to know how to run your software efficiently, operate your equipment safely, or change the settings on your gizmo. They want to avoid communication problems.
I can help you give people the information they need, make it available to them when they need it, and make sure they can use it to get the results you both want. Just tell me what you need to communicate; together we can get it done.