Musings at Work (Bad! Bad!)

I think I am a monarchist.

Why do I say so? Let's observe the following phenomenon. I think the majority of office workers can attest to this. Very often a document to be sent to external parties is never produced by a single party. An initial draft is first created, then circulated round the entire office, sometimes involving top management and even crossing international borders. What emerges at the end of the process, which in some cases can last for years, is a highly edited piece that bears ridiculously little resemblance to the original draft probably drafted by some extremely junior nameless executive in some alley hole of a back office.

Now what is the effect of such a process? Not difficult to fathom. After the initial ego boost of having been asked to draft such an important document to the organisation, the original author of the document starts to lose a feeling of ownership of the document as it gets circulated around and gets edited beyond recognition. The quality of subsequent drafts go down--"Hey, what's the point? It's gonna get rewritten anyway."

The people who get roped in to edit the draft are not idle either. They often have their own portfolios and have to take time out to read the piece. Very seldom will the piece even be related to their core jobscope. So they do what they can afford time for and pass it on--"Ah, don't worry, someone else will edit it later, and I don't have responsibility for writing the document in any case."

And hence the draft, like an abandoned child, gets bounced from department to department like a football, with no one willing to claim ownership nor responsibility. All the more so when something goes wrong and something gets miscommunicated to the external party, or even worse, the public. Then comes a round of finger-pointing--the initial writer for not writing properly, the subsequent editors for not doing their job (They will self-righteously protest, "It's not my job!"), resulting in black faces all round. The history of corporate communcations will exhibit countless examples.

The effects are not limited to the above. It will breed distrust within the organisation, a drop in morale for junior staff when they see that their work is not respected and disillusionment in the office. The list goes on.

Lesson: Writing is an art, and you don't break it down into a factory assembly line, period. Democracy seldom works in such cases. Only when ownership is clearly allocated will the executor ensure the quality of his or her product.