Write Your Procedures Well

We all seem to get a lot of email spam, don't we? Luckily, I have a program that intercepts all of it while it's still on my server, so I have minimal risk of downloading bad email onto my computer.

However, I do have the opportunity to see the email when it's still out there on the server. I don't know how many of you have looked at them, but the ones I see come in four different forms. Two forms are pictures, and I know that because what I see through my program is either only a link, or a nonsensical story that someone has written that, if you end up downloading it onto your computer, you'll only see the picture and not the words.

The other two forms are totally text. One of them is written in a way where you get this short form, straight to the point sales item, as in "buy our pharmaceutical and you'll be taller"; okay, it's never quite that tame. The other one, though, is quite interesting.

It's interesting because, if you've ever taken any time to read some of them, they're long form sales letters, very descriptive of the product, and, if it weren't spam that I hadn't requested, I might be tempted to purchase the product, or at least take a better look at it.

This isn't an article on spam; it's an article on the art of communication. Those who write sales copy are some of the best communicators in the world. I say that because I'm not a long sales letter type of guy. Usually I see the first paragraph, and if I'm even slightly interested I want to go down to the bottom to see how much it's going to cost me. However, every once in awhile I'll read through an entire letter because the first paragraph is so well written that I want to see how the rest of it flows.

How many of you have procedure books in your department, or need to create a procedure book? I have written many procedures over the years, and I've had to review other procedure books as a consultant. I'm happy to say that at least 50% of the procedure books I've read were easy to understand. I'm unhappy to report that at least 80% of the procedure books I've reviewed were incomplete, and left a lot of information unaccounted for.

It's hard for anyone to train employees, or to learn something for themselves, if the instructions aren't easily understood or aren't complete. I ruined two sets of copper piping trying to repair the ice maker for our refrigerator because I just couldn't understand the instructions, and I learned from the expert who came later that there was a special tool that I needed to use in order to make it all work, something that I'd never heard of, let alone knew I needed.

I wrote in one of my earliest newsletters on the need for better writing and communication skills in business. I'm taking this one step further, because it's not all about the common types of communications you're after in this regard. Policy and procedures, for the most part, are sterile and boring. And often, they're written as though everyone in the world understand what's being talked about, and that may or may not be true. I have seen terms used that others don't understand, or software and hardware referred to in multiple terms that confuse the reader.

Medicare is an interesting company to quote in this regard. It's Medicare policy that any information that goes out to the general public has to be written at a third grade level, whether it's being sent from the government or from a health care facility on their behalf. With all the double talk and acronyms used in health care, that's a hard one to achieve, especially when most of the people who are in charge of communicating with patients aren't effective communicators to begin with. Medicare gives rules of the size of the font also; talk about getting to the heart of the matter. Yet, many facilities miss this, and fall in violation of the law, which results in audits not being passed because Medicare regulations weren't followed.

The flip side of this is that Medicare themselves gives lousy written directions. In their policies, they're very good at telling people what they can't, or shouldn't do, but they're not very good at telling providers what they should do. Quite often, they'll come right out and say that they're not allowed to give you certain information, but they're quick to penalize a provider if something is incorrect. Talk about a system that's set up to help one fail!

In your business, though, you probably don't have the time to deal with such failures all the time. You also probably don't have the time to always have to teach the simplest things over and over again. That's why it's in a manager's best interest to write policies, and any other business correspondence, in such a manner that it eliminates 99% of any questions that might arise.

No manual is perfect, and if a particular subject is very complicated there are going to be things missed. If you take the time to get the simplest concepts explained so that they're understood quickly, then you won't mind taking the time to respond to the hardest issues. And, if you're like me, you want to know about those hard issues anyway.