Category: Work

I recently received an email which asked:

Since my career seems to be following a path broadly similar to yours … I’d love to know what your experience was and any lessons learned.

Specifically Mark, who sent the email, asked a few questions:

1. How do you take over as manager for a group of technical writers?
2. How do you get better management buy-in (promise cheaper or faster dox?)?
3. What are the first activities you should do (content audit, benchmarking?)?
4. How soon is *not* too soon to start changing things?

I’ll break each question out into a new post so, without further ado, onto question #1.

How do you take over as manager for a group of technical writers?
Carefully!

Typically if you are joining an established team then it pays dividends to take your time to settle in, understand their working processes and day to day habits. It’s fair to presume that they have a set of processes that work for them and that are tailored for their environment. That’s not to say that those processes couldn’t be improved but avoid being brash and making changes for the sake of it. You got the job, you don’t need to ‘make your mark’ by changing things the minute you get in the door.

I’m not sure if I have a management style per se, but I do try and be as open as possible. If I don’t complete a task I say so, and if I hear something that the team might want to know, I’ll tell them. Beyond that I let them manage their day to day activities and try and make sure that my role only extends as far as pulling everything together into a cohesive view across the entire documentation set. I strongly believe that a good manager is one who removes obstacles and deals with issues, whilst promoting his team at every opportunity. I’ve been lucky that the team I currently have are diligent and motivated, all I really do is guide them when they need it.

As a new manager it’s important to quickly build relationships with everyone with whom you’d like to be involved. I’d suggest that that typically means almost every area of the company. A short introductory meeting with each manager or team lead is usually enough, a quick chat to outline what you are trying to achieve with your team, and how it may benefit them. This is largely the beginnings of managing the expectations of what your team can bring to a company, as well as building some bridges.

Currently I have good ties into Sales, Pre-Sales, Marketing, Training and our project staff. It can be tricky keep everyone up to speed, but the benefits of having a consistent message is an easy one to sell. These introductory meetings also allow you to re-instate the position of your team. Previously it may have been the case that “ohhh we don’t talk to Marketing” but you can use the fact that you are new to break through the socio-political barriers, after all, you don’t know any better, do you?

Gaining buy-in from your team is the main thing that you need to figure out. Taking a soft approach when you first join, making sure that you are learning from the team and not dictating things is important. Ask questions by all means, sometimes a simple question might prompt the team to realise something they had noticed (aka the ‘can’t see the wood for the trees syndrome’) but it makes sure that you are seen as a team player.

Finally you need to understand the business plan. Ultimately part of your job is to make sure that your team is contributing towards the goals of that plan as efficiently as possible. You will have other expectations and agreed deliverables, and understanding the business plan will allow you to make the right decisions both for your team and for the benefit of the company.

Once you understand all of this, your position, and the position of your team in the company, you can start to formulate goals and aims. Setting a high level vision for where you want to take the team can be tricky but if you have spent the time gaining their trust and buy-in, you should be able to collate all of that into a vision that everyone agrees. Once you have that, revisit your colleagues that you introduced yourself to and update them. Set out the expectations for the coming few months and get going!

A couple of days ago I Twittered the following “Twitter-verse – recommendations for a Photo Poster service (ie, send them a JPG, they send back a large format ‘poster’ of said photo)“, to which Lyle responded “@gordon : Photobox, although it does depend on the size of print“.

Last night I browsed to the Photobox website and had a look around. I didn’t fill in any details, although I did bookmark the specific page I was looking for so I could revisit it at a later date (e.g. after pay day!).

And today I received an email from Twitter stating that “PhotoBox (PhotoBox) is now following your updates on Twitter.”

Coincidence? I think not.

Evidence that Twitter is now in the realm of ‘marketing tool’, definitely.

Thankfully Twitter remains controllable, frankly I don’t care how many people follow me. I can block those I really don’t want to see my updates, and the rest, be they person or company, do me little harm so they can follow, follow, follow all they like.

Remember people, you control your social media and your social media is not you.

Cherryleaf will soon be publishing the results of their recent survey of Documentation Managers* and, having skimmed through a preview, the main thing that leaps out at me is that the field of Technical Communications in the UK remains as diverse as ever in many respects, yet completely the same in others, and none of that is a huge surprise.

Whilst we all may use different tools and approaches to our work, we all feel under the same constraints of time and resource. However the results do throw up a couple of issues and, as one of the participants of the survey, I thought I’d expand a little on one of those.

The survey hints at two issues:

1. “The documentation teams generally continue to use authoring tools exclusive to the team … Content from 3rd parties, in most cases, needed to be … imported into the authoring system.”
2. There was little evidence of any moves toward a company-wide approach to sharing and managing intellectual content.

I don’t think the first is a contentious statement but what interests me is the phrasing. The implication is that technical writing teams are seen as (or see themselves as?) content consumers, areas of the company into which content is lost to proprietary tooling. Obviously we publish a lot of content but perhaps we are a little too guarded of the information we collate?

I’ve never had an issue sharing information, regardless of state, as long as the appropriate caveats are in place. Information is meant to be shared, so the more of it we do, the better. In my opinion.

More interesting is the second point around the lack of evidence of company-wide information management. This is something I’ve been working on with key members of other areas of our company, and from previous experience it’s usually the technical writing team that takes a lead here as we gain the most benefit from having a good information management solution in place.

That may boil down to a document management system (from ad-hoc to access controlled repositories), or even a content management system, but ultimately the benefits are applicable across entire organisations. I’m lucky in that there are a couple of people who see the benefits and so it’s much easier to drive adoption and cooperation across the organisation, but even if that weren’t the case, and in the current climate, it may be something you should look into and start to drive forward yourself.

The survey results are, like any survey, a thin sample of our profession in the UK, but it’s great to have that information available. I’ve already spotted a few things that I can use in discussions within my own company, and there are plenty of common themes and ideas that can be carried forward to help improve our team.

So, well done Cherryleaf, I’m sure it wasn’t an easy process but I certainly think it was well worthwhile.

* A coverall title that encompasses anyone responsible for a team of technical writers.

There is a dot on my screen. It’s not a small dot, it’s not a distinct dot so I guess it’s more of a blurry circle.

But it’s there, in the middle of the screen, glowing at me. It’s slightly worrying. It’s most noticeable when I dim the screen all the way down. On the MacBook you can use the F1 and F2 keys to decrease and increase the brightness. What the following photo tries to show is the screen set to minimum brightness (the next step down is completely dark/off).

Ignore all the reflections and screen dazzle, that weird glowing circle in the middle looks almost exactly like that (I’ve adjusted the pic very slightly to make it more obvious).

The most annoying thing is that it doesn’t always appear. It comes and goes on a random basis. I’ve tried it with and without the power cable in, with and without various applications open, I’ve restarted several times, yet still it comes back.

Any suggestions?? Anyone?

I’ve been Twittering for almost two years now and after being an early adopter who quickly turned naysayer, it’s now proving to be useful in a myriad of subtle and different ways.

It alerts me to breaking news (I heard of the Hudson River crash before anything featured on the BBC News website), provides movie, music and book recommendations, links to interesting websites and topics, and keeps me amused with that little touch of voyeuristic pleasure that is akin to sneak a peek into a living room window as you walk past.

I think it’s safe to say that, as Stephen Fry said last night, I get it.

I can’t recall the exact quote, nor who said it, but the true value of Twitter is only now being uncovered. The instant nature of the technology, the ease of use and forced brevity lend themselves to several different uses. Corporations are now looking at how they could use it internally, the marketers are trying to figure out how to leverage it, and everyone and their dog seems to be jumping on board.

Which brings me to the second quote that is now applicable to Twitter. It has, most definitely, jumped the shark (in the newer sense of the phrase). Anyone who has a Twitter account can probably sympathise here, with each day bringing a new ‘Follow’ request from a complete stranger (at best) to some company or other (at worst).

There has also, recently, been a spate of celebrities signing up. The good news is that they seem to ‘get it’ as well. The aforementioned Mr. Fry and Jonathan Ross both have Twitter accounts, personal accounts that is, not something created to help ‘market’ them. In the case of Jonathan Ross it’s been especially interesting to read his very personal thoughts as he returns to the TV screen. Time will tell how that will change of course.

Despite having hinted at it recently I’m not ditching Twitter, far from it. I will be locking things down a little more, and it’s likely I’ll start blocking people I don’t know, and thankfully whilst the Twitter website itself remains low in functionality, there are several Twitter clients out there which can help filter and manage what is, by nature, a high volume way of communicating.

I’m not entirely sure what the rising popularity of Twitter will bring but I am looking forward to finding out.

Right. I’ve had it with you lot, it’s all take take take. Time to pay. £1 each will do. Leave it at the door as you leave. Thanks.

I am, of course, joking.

I know you lot are too tight to pay anything, don’t worry, I wouldn’t either.

But the thing is that I DO get paid for this blog. Not (just) via the adverts either. I get paid in the richness and kindess of your comments and emails, by the fact that I’ve been lucky enough to meet many of you and the startling revelation that you are all really nice in person too!

I only mention all of this to frame my next statement.

The internet, and the social networking aspects of it are not there to be leveraged. They are there to be participated in, and if you don’t choose to join in then, quite simply, you shouldn’t be surprised when you don’t get any benefits and you will continue to remain one of those people who don’t “get it”.

I could go on but I think that covers things broadly enough.

Why am I mentioning this now?

Because over the past 2 weeks I’ve received 3 separate requests for me to advertise something on this blog. No offer of payment just the presumption that I’ll happily promote their latest product for them, help gather ideas or content or photos for their book and so on.

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like 2009 at all. Don’t they get it yet??