Technical Report Writing Course Lessons Learned

Technical Report Writing Course Lessons Learned "Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this." ~ Anne Lamott After leading technical report writing courseswith large and small companies for nearly 20 years, I have seen a common challenge present repeatedly. Telling the truth can be hard. Conveyingfindings or recommendations that we know aren't welcome can be daunting because no one wants to disappoint people, especially a boss. But, truth in business reports is absolutely essential. There is no way around it. We must be 100% truthful in business reports. If we aren't, the results can be disastrous. A Technical Report Writing Course Story from the Trenches Aplastic-producing company clienttold me they lost their largest customerwhen the polymers the companyproduced broke down ata particular temperature. This shouldn't have happened because extensive testing had been conducted on the polymers, which reportedly had withstood temperatures far in excess of the breakdown point encountered. When we deconstructed the information path backwards from the customer proposal that specified the polymerperformance to production reports to testing reports, we noticed some ambiguity in testing reports. The testing reports didn't overtly state the temperature breakdown point. Instead, it simply stated "acceptable heat tolerance." That vagueness shouldn't have been allowed into production. It did move to production, though,because various readers of the testing reports had different understandingabout the meaning of "acceptable heat tolerance." That was mistake # 1, and was more about accuracy (also critical) than truth.We discovered a bigger truth mistake as we continued to excavate the information path to its source. The person who wrote the testing report confided in me that he felt a lot of pressure to "...approve the testing because we needed to move into production fast to meet order demand. My boss would have been very unhappy with me if I had been the one to identify that this major product really had limited heat application. Our bonuses were tied to our innovation and production." Ugh. A "small" sweep-it-under-the-rug-move-it-along choice eventually cost the company its largest customer and opportunity. The fallout in publicity and liability was far worse than any delay and resolution would have been. The testing engineer rightly lost his job. Nothing good happened by not reporting truthfully. I could tell you story after story I've heard in training sessions and client meetings about the harm of sidestepping difficult issues in reports. Nothing. Let me repeat, nothing, matters more in reports than truth and accuracy. Decisions are made based on reports. If the information is not accurate and truthful, the decisions are based on faulty data or information. hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(41482, '934718b3-251a-45d6-8853-a7f94e43b92c', {}); Don't be Afraid to ConveyBad Newsin Business Reports Never apologize for delivering "bad news" at work in any circumstance. If it's a good business decision, just state the truthful facts. Apologizing just undermines the good decision. Omitting information is more dangerous than truth. Remember, technical business reports and business reports are used for decision making. If the information in the report is not truthful, the report is dangerous to the company's profit and reputation. It can alsocause potentially dangerous implications when implemented. Another client contacted us afterfor technical report writing training whenmetal triggers they manufactured forlaw enforcement weapons failed to work. The cause was the same. A testing engineer was afraid of being blamed for a production delay and disappointing his boss. (He also reported "there was no place in the report template for the information," but that is a separate report writing issue to address in another article.) A police officer was injured when a weapon he needed defensively failed to work. Truth matters in report writing. "Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this." ~ Anne Lamott

Summary review Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Summary review - Essay Example ’ and motivates the man to interact with the other employees so that he can learn about the styles that he uses as a manager (Blanchard and Johnson 14). In order to be an effective manager, Blanchard and Johnson have given three primary secrets in the book. The first secret is open minded goal setting. According to Blanchard and Johnson (18), this is the one minute management foundation. They vouch for the 80-20 rule of goal setting. By this, they simply imply that 80% of results that are really important come 20% of goals that were set. This simply entails making people aware of what they should do in their duties. In one minute goal setting, the first step is agreeing on the goals. This is followed by looking out for good behavior, then writing out each of the set goals in not more than 250 words. The fourth step entails reading and re-reading each goal, which should be less than a minute. The next step requires one to take a minute off each day to evaluate their performance and finally seeing whether or not the goals match their behavior (Blanchard and Johnson 22). The second secret is one minute praisings (Blanchard and Johnson 24). The two authors point out that people can reach their maximum potential if they are helped by effective managers to know every time they do something right. Blanchard and Johnson note that when people produce good results, they tend to feel really good about themselves. The first step in one minute praisings is letting people know up front that you are going to inform them about how they are doing. The second step is praising people immediately and then telling people what they do right, immediately they do it and in specific terms. Also, it is important to let people know you feel great regarding what they have done right and how it is helpful to the business and other people in it. Encouraging them to continue doing more of the same also works well. Finally, it is important to show people who do well that you support their

Economic context of Banking Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Economic context of Banking - Essay Example There has been revolutionary structural reformation after financial liberalization in 1990s. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) made its firm role as the administrative agency of supervision and banking. The structure of the banking sector has undergone a significant transformation wherein the public sector banks have been observed in losing their relative importance which resulted to have more domestic private banks and more foreign banks. Even if a number of measures have been taken by the government to ensure higher stability, competition and efficiency, there still exist some problems in with the banking system, for example profitability of public sector banks has not been increased, and foreign banks are not performing at their desired level and so on. The overall performance of the banking sector has improved over time, but desired level of performance has not been reached. Hence the paper also provides my opinions regarding some recommendations. Introduction In many countries gov ernment plays an important role in maintaining competition, efficiency and stability in the operation of banking system. However, it would be quite interesting to consider a particular country and examine to what extent government supports the banking system in enhancing competition, stability and efficiency. For this purpose, the banking system of India will be chosen in this paper as India has a very active and a very interesting banking sector where public, private and foreign banks have their own importance and operate simultaneously. This paper will first look at the banking system of India and the role that the Indian government does play in increasing competition, stability and efficiency in Indian banking sector. Thus it will go on analyzing the extent to which the governmental efforts have been able to enhance the performance of the banks. Finally, some recommendations would be forwarded on how to effectively increase competition, stability and efficiency of banking sector. Indian Banking sector and the role of government in increasing competition, stability and efficiency in Indian banking sector The Government of India when nationalizing all the popular Indian banks in 1969 sought that banking was "inspired by a larger social purpose" and should attend national importance and goals such as rapid development in agriculture, small scale industry and exports. Now a day a body of direct and indirect proof is there to show that credit markets in developing countries frequently fail to make credit where its social product might be the highest. (Agarwal, 2003) Nationalization of Indian banks has helped in meeting social needs of the country. Earlier, the banks only concentrated on lending their money to big industrial houses. But after nationalization, the banks extend their loans to small scale industrialists, peasants and other individuals also. Nationalization has also helped in expansion of banking network to the rural areas as well. Peasants and small scale industrialized are also getting loans at lower interest rates. All these have helped in the growth and development of relatively poor segment of the population. (Agarwal, 2003; Mohan, 2005) However, nationalization has put various regulations

Organisations need strong culture. Consider this statementin relation Essay

Organisations need strong culture. Consider this statementin relation to how we understand and makesense of culture in the post-bureaucratic era - Essay Example The aim of this paper is to explain the mainstream approach to organization culture. Here the managers always work to maintain right values, ethics, code of conduct and norms. Culture is the top priority for organizations where culture management, ensuring employees to follow the organization’s culture leading to organizational success. Values, norms and ethics vary among organizations when organizations are treated as different states. All of these organizations have different value sets and norms leading to differing systems and structures (Brewis, 2007). Culture, therefore, provides a common sense to the organization that enables the human resource to delineate ways to how to act and when and where to act. Organizational culture is responsible for bringing an organization to life as all the strategies, policies, regulations must be synchronized with the culture and the employees and managers (the alive participants) of the organization keeps the culture alive by following it. Organizational culture is therefore written and stored in the form of job descriptions, procedures, strategies etc. But if there arises a conflict between the documented and the practiced norms, values, and beliefs practiced within an organization, serious conflicts may occur leading to disastrous effects. The people will drift away from the formal rules at workplace. Organizational culture comprises of values and sets of beliefs that directly and predominantly originate from people’s minds identified as cultural artefacts (Brewis, 2007). Cultural artefacts are somewhat tangible and more material embodiment of organizational culture consisting of: According to Schein, among the three levels of culture, artefacts forms the tip of the iceberg, that is the visible part keeping hence, the two other parts way behind and hidden beneath. Values refer to answering questions such as what we are

Final exam Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Final exam - Assignment Example The following diagram illustrates the model. Source of information The message Receiver Interactive models are another class of models of communication. Though achieving the same purpose of transmitting information from a sender to a receiver, the model recognizes active participation of the receiver through feedback. The model also identifies continuity in communication as the receiver becomes the secondary sender during feedback and the primary sender becomes a secondary receiver recognizes the role of the environment on communication. The model is also cyclic. The following diagram illustrates the modes. Field of experience Message Field of experience Encoder, source, decoder Decoder, receiver, encoder Feedback Another model of communication is the transactional model that recognizes the potential of simultaneous communication as opposed to the single directional scope of the linear model. The sender in the model is also the receiver at the same time. The transactional model also considers effects of time in communications. The following diagrams illustrate the model. Transactional model in an interpersonal communication Time Difference in context Transactional model in a mass communication Time Contextual difference (Wood 16, 17) Q2. ... Another link between communication and culture is the role of communication as an indicator of culture. Even though communication influence culture through facilitating sustainability, culture also shape people’s communication approaches. Differences in communication styles among people from different cultures show this. Consequently, communication forms a basis of identifying different cultures. Similarity in communication styles among people from the same culture can classify the society into communities while difference in communication within the communities can classify aspects such as behaviour. Indicator role of communication over culture helps in improving cross-cultural communication by bridging communication barriers. Another link between communication and culture is the role of communication if initiating and influencing cultural changes. One of the examples of this role of communication is in the development and spread of the hip-hop culture that emerged through mu sic artists and was communicated to influence the youth into the hip hop culture (Wood 159, 168). Some of the communication concepts that relate to culture are communication barrier and dynamism in communication amidst development in technologies (Wood 120). Culture defines a person’s environment and therefore contributes to situational barriers to communication. Cultural differences are an example. Culture also define norms, behaviour, and attitude that may consider some communication trends as immoral or complex and therefore offer resistance to advancement in communication (Wood 159). Q3. The first step in preparation for a speech is earning credibility from the audience and this is achieved through ensuring reliability

Slavery Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Slavery - Essay Example The story of Equiano demonstrates the inhumane situation of the slaves and the acceptance by slaves the white racial theories. In the middle of the XVII England has been shaken by the political crisis because of Oliver Cromwell revolution. The Putney Debates of 1647 revealed the English Revolution as an abolishment movement, a 1659 Parliamentary debate on slavery and the â€Å"free-born Englishman†, held on the eve of the restoration of Charles II and the Stuart monarchy, marked a counterrevolutionary reversal (Linebaugh, 132). The Putney Debates between Thomas Rainborough and Henry Ireton raised the questions of the struggle for the commons and struggle against slavery. Domestic wars and conflicts led to appearance of the new slavery forms in England: white slaves in Barbados, slavery in West Africa, Jamaica. Irish radicals and foes were sent by Oliver Cromwell to the Barbados, in the 1649 British merchants ordered the construction of a trading fort on the Gold Coast. The ski n color wasn’t decisive for the slavery - it was a matter of the profit for the merchants and elites. And Equiano in his autobiography gave us great example when even in the mid of the XVIII century there was an incident during the way through the ocean, when â€Å"one white man in particular I saw, when we were permitted to be on deck, flogged so unmercifully with a large rope near the foremast, that he died in consequence of it: and they tossed him over the side as they would have done a brute† (Equiano, 423). The interracial co-operations were not solitary: for example, Africans and Irish conspired together in plots of 1675, 1686, 1692 and alliance between slaves and servants was what planters feared most of all (Linebaugh, 126). The slavery began to acquire the racial shade in the 1670s. The resistance of plantation workers exploded in 1675-1676 in Virginia. There were two uprisings. The first one began in 1675 and was a war for land by freedmen and small farmers a gainst Indians and a portion of the colonial ruling class in Virginia. The second one was a war against slavery, waged by servants and slaves. After rebellion the planters charged the governor with restraining â€Å"any inhumane severity which by ill masters or overseers may be used toward Christian servants† (Linebaugh, 137). And the result of this rebellion was legislation in 1682 that provided â€Å"all servants not being Christians, being imported into this country by shipping† should be servants for twelve years, instead European servants – for five years. Of course, this legislation was directed toward the Africans. The defeats of the servants and slaves that was detailed represented in the â€Å"The Many-Headed Hydra†, became the reason why the elites, nobles, â€Å"whites† began to establishing new rules that had aim to discriminate the rebels and to justify himself. From the 1670s legislation was enacted to protect and Christians, â€Å"w hite† people (Linebaugh, 139). Rulers from the England, merchants and planters dispossessed tens of thousands more in Ireland, Barbados, West Africa and Virginia and made the slavery of Atlantic capitalism (Linebaugh, 141). Indeed, the masses of cheep labour in the America and Europe created the possibility to very fast enrichments. Slaves were very good investments. The people from the lowest classes had no wealth, they had no property. The capitalists wanted to control them,

Final exam Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Final exam - Assignment Example The following diagram illustrates the model. Source of information The message Receiver Interactive models are another class of models of communication. Though achieving the same purpose of transmitting information from a sender to a receiver, the model recognizes active participation of the receiver through feedback. The model also identifies continuity in communication as the receiver becomes the secondary sender during feedback and the primary sender becomes a secondary receiver recognizes the role of the environment on communication. The model is also cyclic. The following diagram illustrates the modes. Field of experience Message Field of experience Encoder, source, decoder Decoder, receiver, encoder Feedback Another model of communication is the transactional model that recognizes the potential of simultaneous communication as opposed to the single directional scope of the linear model. The sender in the model is also the receiver at the same time. The transactional model also considers effects of time in communications. The following diagrams illustrate the model. Transactional model in an interpersonal communication Time Difference in context Transactional model in a mass communication Time Contextual difference (Wood 16, 17) Q2. ... Another link between communication and culture is the role of communication as an indicator of culture. Even though communication influence culture through facilitating sustainability, culture also shape people’s communication approaches. Differences in communication styles among people from different cultures show this. Consequently, communication forms a basis of identifying different cultures. Similarity in communication styles among people from the same culture can classify the society into communities while difference in communication within the communities can classify aspects such as behaviour. Indicator role of communication over culture helps in improving cross-cultural communication by bridging communication barriers. Another link between communication and culture is the role of communication if initiating and influencing cultural changes. One of the examples of this role of communication is in the development and spread of the hip-hop culture that emerged through mu sic artists and was communicated to influence the youth into the hip hop culture (Wood 159, 168). Some of the communication concepts that relate to culture are communication barrier and dynamism in communication amidst development in technologies (Wood 120). Culture defines a person’s environment and therefore contributes to situational barriers to communication. Cultural differences are an example. Culture also define norms, behaviour, and attitude that may consider some communication trends as immoral or complex and therefore offer resistance to advancement in communication (Wood 159). Q3. The first step in preparation for a speech is earning credibility from the audience and this is achieved through ensuring reliability