Managing offshored writers?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

sjgarriott wondered: <<The rumor is that my company will be offshoring 
some of their tech writing responsibilities in the near future. It 
looks like I will be responsible for managing these resources should it 
occur. I am a senior tech writer who has tried to dodge the 
"management" bullet for some time now, but it looks like this one's got 
my name on it. If anyone out there has had experience with this 
situation, I would love to hear from you as I create my strategy for 
using offshored writers to the benefit of my company.>>

I too successfully dodged the management bullet for many years, until I 
succumbed and became VP then President of the local STC Chapter. It was 
less painful that I expected, and actually ended up being an exhausting 
but deeply enriching couple of years. So I can't provide any really 
good management advice other than to reiterate the oft-neglected "treat 
your people with respect and prioritize helping them do their jobs". 
Some day I hope to write a book about how not to manage technical 
communicators--from the employee's standpoint.

A recent experience in China demonstrated to me that you can never go 
wrong by learning to understand and honor local customs, and being 
keenly aware of the countless opportunities for miscommunication. 
Showing this kind of respect is greatly appreciated, particularly if 
you're American and thus, have been tarred with the reputation for 
acting as if "we are the world". As a Canadian, I didn't labor under 
this burden, but speaking some Mandarin and being more formally polite 
than many of my hosts earned me enormous amounts of good will, and many 
smiles, only some of which resulted from my pronunciation. (Took 2 
weeks to get tea instead of a fork in restaurants! <g>*)

* The word for tea and a fork, cha, is spelled the same in English 
(pinyin) if you ignore the diacritical marks, but the pronunciation is 
clearly different.

In terms of communication difficulties, always pretend that you're 
talking to early-grade school students. NOT because the people you are 
going to be dealing with are stupid or naive--but because like these 
young students, the people you're talking to lack your dozens of years 
of experience with English idiom, shorthand, and verbal conventions. 
(We all make certain assumptions in communicating based on what our 
culture has taught us.)

NEVER write in stupid, patronizing terms. But do carefully review what 
you're going to say so you can ask yourself: "What assumptions am I 
making in using this particular wording? Will someone who wasn't 
brought up in my dialect understand these assumptions?" Asking people 
to paraphrase what you've said is a good thing, because it helps you 
see whether they've really understood what you said.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


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