Re: Tool efficiencies, Was Word up..

["Tim Altom" <taltom -at- simplywritten -dot- com>]

I begin to have a sharpened sense of our disagreement, Andrew. You champion
the lone writer, magnificent in his skill and his devotion to duty.
Wonderful image, but far too limiting, I think. It puts me in mind of
bearded Amish craftsmen laboring over heavy oak furniture. A lovely,
pastoral scene, but ultimately inefficient and therefore inherently limited.
In such a world, there are no definitions, no repeatability, no standards
other than applause. It's art. There is surely a place for such people. Just
not in our company, nor in the clients we serve.

Simply Written, on the other hand, champions a paradigm more like that of
Henry Ford, who could take the talents of a few and produce acceptable
quality for the masses. This has been denigrated in many quarters as
soulless, a parasitical existence that sucks the life out of the worker and
leaves him a dry husk. Such language is polemic, mostly, written by union
leaders and politicians. And by and large, it's nowhere near true today.

Today's production systems are the most efficient, the safest, and the most
beneficial in all of human history. The cottage industries still exist, but
they're mostly economically dependent on their more efficient neighbors. We
Americans are strangely ambivalent about efficient, large-scale thinking. On
the one hand, we depend on it for almost everything we have. On the other,
we resent the thought that we might have to participate in it.

I advocate efficiency for even the smallest companies and departments,
except those very few (and largely unprofitable) companies that specialize
in hand-work. For the rest, there is virtue in a reasonable efficiency. And
yes, in such a paradigm, it IS possible to define quality. You seem to place
quality and efficiency at opposite ends of a spectrum of your own devising.
This is obviously nonsense. The Japanese learned how to provide both
throughout the 1970s and almost took away our entire auto industry. Today
the Honda, the Toyota, and other foreign cars are wonders of reliability AND
efficiency. As far back as the dawning of the 20th century, Ford had figured
out how to make cars that were both efficiently manufactured and durable.
Today the same is true of Intel, AMD, Motorola, and others in the high-tech
industries.

Even in documentation, quality is definable. It has to be. It is not art,
but a repeatable business function. I suspect that the reason why your
clients are happy to give you a free hand, when they would not think of
doing so with vendors for their products' spare parts, is that they expect
nothing of consequence, having been told for years that a technical writer
is just as you describe, a scribbler willing to do whatever he is told,
skillfully or otherwise. If the writer is gifted and the ensuing document is
good, all the better. If it isn't, no one is particularly harmed. But it's
just not an important enough business element to waste perfectly good
investigation upon.

When major companies deal with vendors of injectors, molded plastics, or
other manufactured good, they visit the shops, demand to see the machinery,
and view quality assurance records. They look for tangible, measurable
indicators to reassure themselves that you will make quality goods for them.
This matters to them, because they'll have to live with the consequences for
a long time. The same buyers have been convinced that tech writers bang out
one-of-a-kind documents, one at a time, and that such a situation is
typical. More is not expected, although it can certainly be delivered. You
may find it to be an expression of complete faith in you, that they don't
demand more of you. I see it as an expression of disinterest in the product.
The more the client agitates for proof of quality, the more importance he
puts on the final output.

At Simply Written, and at an increasing number of contract houses and
internal departments, it's no longer enough to depend on the caprice of
individual writers, just as it's not enough to depend on the brilliance of
craftsmen on the assembly line. There is room for brilliance, and good
people make a great deal of difference. But the best work for the entire
company is done within a system that supports both quality and efficiency.
There is no reason to consider them polar opposites, unless you are unable
to supply both, as we customarily do. And we can measure both, as well.
There is no reason why anybody else cannot. We've taught a good many
technical communicators to do so.

As I said in opening this message, you and I are on opposite sides of a
paradigm. I am finished arguing for mine. I will discuss matters concerning
technical communication, but I will not defend the very paradigm under which
my company, and so many others, operate. If you choose not to work within
it, that is, of course, your choice. But to assail the paradigm itself is a
waste of bandwidth. It is not going away. Indeed, we serve more clients
every year, using it. That is a measurement of success, I think. And like
quality, success can be measured, and not merely declared.


Tim Altom
Simply Written, Inc.
Featuring FrameMaker and the Clustar(TM) System
"Better communication is a service to mankind."
317.562.9298
Check our Web site for the upcoming Clustar class info
http://www.simplywritten.com



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