A Matter of Some Length

[billroper]

I chatted with my co-worker, Doug, last night on the cellphone after work and he mentioned that our new boss wanted a document from me explaining why we do some things in our software the way that we do. Being an obliging type, I produced a five-page document that discussed what the competitive advantages of our product are and why doing things the way that we do supports them as opposed to the proposed alternative which would, well, not support them.

When Doug got into work this afternoon (he'd had an offsite meeting in the morning), he took one look at the document and said that it was supposed to be one page long. I would swear that he hadn't mentioned that when we spoke last night.

Ok, now there's a one-page version of the document to go with the five-page version that actually explains things. *sigh*

Comments

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel better...

Every document I create for work has the detailed document, an executive summary (two pages) and a power point presentation for the executives who can't read but like pretty pictures.

In a Blast from the Past . . .

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

Time, Life and Look magazines!

The scientists I've worked for are a little better than that, since the journal articles they produce HAVE to be that detailed in order to be accepted for publication. Abstracts make good summaries, but are not considered enough information when standing alone.

If I HAD to do that sort of condensation exercise, I would be highly tempted to footnote the heck out of my summary with references back to the pertinent sections of my longer document. ("Why do we do it this way? _Here's_ what would go south if we didn't.")

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

You know, in the same situation, I'd almost be tempted to reduce it to 6 or even 4 point font and stretch the margins just to get 5 pages of content to fit onto one page of paper.

In college, I knew a melophone player who would reduce "quick-step" sized music even further so she could tape it to her bell instead of memorizing it. I'm sure it would be about as readable as a 6 or 4 point printed document.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

In grad school, one of my professors wanted to teach us to write succinctly. All reviews had to be no more than two pages. One bastard in the class printed all his reviews in a 4 point font.

[pheltzer.livejournal.com]

I fight this battle constantly at work. The executives ask for an explanation, and then I'm told to boil it down to a single powerpoint slide, which of course isn't sufficient to answer the question asked. So I end up spending an hour on the phone with them answering their original question, when if they would have just taken the 10 minutes to read the original 2 page document would have saved everyone time.

What it comes down to, as far as I can tell... executives don't believe they're doing their job unless they can make everyone beneath them jump through as many hoops as possible.

Oh and for what it's worth... it seems that they routinely ignore the information they asked for and do what they want anyway... so I've just sort of stopped caring.

[daddy-guido.livejournal.com]

heyyyy.... WAIT a minute - I'M an executive, and I don't do that.....

[pheltzer.livejournal.com]

Either you're the exception or I need to clarify that my statement is about large corporations.... :)