 Lecture 12, As-Salaam-Alaikum. Welcome to the virtual university's course on business and technical communication. In today's lecture, we'll be looking at how to plan business messages. You will learn to describe the basic tasks in the composition process. You will also learn how to define both general and specific purposes of your message, alongside testing the purpose of your message. We'll also talk about how to develop an audience profile and how to analyze the needs of your audience. We look at establishing the main idea of the message and selecting an appropriate channel or medium for transmitting a particular message to a particular audience. In the composition process, you will gain control over your message and the composition process should be flexible, not a fixed prescription of sequence steps. The composition process in which you compose your message should be flexible so that you can change it from your own meaning to the way you compose your message from your own meaning. You can do the steps from your own meaning. Not that all of them are in the same sequence and you are thinking that I don't have to follow these steps in the same way. The composition process can be viewed as 10 separate stages that fall into three simple categories. We will divide the 10 stages into three categories. But remember that these 10 stages are not in one sequence. They are in a specific flexibility. You can do the steps from your own meaning to the stage that you are in. The three categories are planning, composing and revising. But again, it doesn't mean that when the planning is done, it is completely over and you are not able to do anything when you are back on the stage of composing. Obviously, when you compose a message, you will also plan along with it. If you have already planned it, then you can still do it. Similarly, when you have done the entire message and you are revising it, it can happen that while revising it, you think that I have to write something else, compose something new and add it. Then you can come back to composing. Now let us see what are the other stages of these categories. In planning, we have four stages which are defining of the purpose, analyzing the audience, establishing the main idea and selecting the channel and medium. As far as composing is concerned, in composing, you will be organizing the message and then you will formulate the message. In the category of revising, come the actions of editing the message, rewriting the message, producing the message and proofreading your message. Now for all of these, for the actions, I listed the ten actions in all the three categories, you need to have very sharp skills and you need to basically overcome the fear of the blank page, especially when you are actually composing the message. Now in order for you to overcome this fear of starting to write a message, you need to talk yourself into being positive, use positive self-talk, pep yourself up, increase your confidence, think that I have to do this, what is the benefit in this and I can do it very well, etc. Do not let yourself be inhibited. When you are in front of a blank page, do not be afraid to write what I am writing and if you start writing, you will be able to compose a very good message. You should also know your purpose. If you know your purpose, it will help you in writing a good message and it will help you overcome the initial fear you have of the blank page. Also try to visualize your audience. Try to bring the picture of your students in your mind. Try to think who they are and if you think of them as humans, it will be easy for you to compose a message. You will feel that I am talking to them. Also create a productive environment. When you are composing a message, try to make your environment easier for you. It is very useful to make an outline a lot of the times. It is always good to make some kind of an outline, even if it is a rough jotting down of points. It helps you sharpen your message and take away that fear of the blank page. For some people it is good just to start. Some people might not want to have an outline. They might not want to just sit down and think about it or pep themselves up. Some people write better if they just immerse themselves into the writing and if they just start. A lot of the times you might just want to start writing and then come back to it and fine tune it. There are a lot of things that you might not have written all of a sudden but you have to change them in a special way. That is also fine. Every person has their own way of writing. Some people work better with an outline. Some people work better with a rough draft. It depends on how your ideas flow. For some people it might be more useful to write the middle part first and then come to the introduction and the ending. Also try to push all obstacles aside. Start with the easy things. Don't deal with obstacles. The obstacles will get solved by themselves. Technology is a very useful tool in the composing process and it helps us greatly if it affects the composition process a great deal. For example Microsoft Word increases productivity and effectiveness by streamlining the process. In Microsoft Word type packages we get a lot of easy things like spell checks, grammar checks, dictionaries which are very easy to write. If we are getting some weak messages we can rely on them a lot. Now this technology has become very easy. Also you can collaborate. In many organizations the final piece of writing is a team effort. So a lot of times you might be writing with more than one person and for some pieces of writing there may be more than one writer working on a document. So you might not be the message that you have written. You might not go out as you wrote it. Other people might have worked on writing that message as well and you might then collaborate at the end what you all have written or you might sit down together and write a piece of document. So that also is one way of writing business messages. Now also it's very important to schedule your time properly. Allocating your time is very important. You can't spend hours and hours on one business message. So it's important that you stick to a schedule and you know when you need to finish. You set yourself some parameters especially when time is short. You need to be very then quick in producing your business message. Now something that will help you greatly in organizing your message is defining your purpose. The purpose of the document helps you decide whether you should proceed or not. Maybe looking at what the purpose is you might decide that you don't need to write a message for this purpose. It might just be better to communicate orally. So it will help you if you know the purpose then you can actually determine whether you need to proceed with writing this business message or not. You also if you know the purpose you will also know how to proceed. What type of medium to use and we'll be looking at that medium and channel later on in this lecture. You will also decide how to respond to the audience, which information to focus on and as I said which channel or medium to use. So all these things once you know the purpose then you can decide. You can also decide how you will actually go about it. Do you want to start making an outline or do you want to start with just writing down all your ideas in paragraph form on a blank page. So all these things will be determined largely by your purpose as well. Now why really do you need a clear purpose? We talked about purpose. What exactly let's have a look at some examples why we need a real purpose. Suppose your boss asks you to write a memo describing the company's policy on vacation time. Now this is a fairly broad topic. The company's policy about vacation it can involve a lot of things. It can involve a lot of different people who will be affected by the policy. Now you need to decide what you have to say and knowing the purpose of your message will help you make important decisions about it. If you know that this message is going to go to who it's going to go to, what the purpose is, will it actually be used to determine a policy, will it be used to make a decision about maybe a change in policy and existing policy. All these things will help you determine how you will actually go about producing the message. Now earlier we talked about the fact that knowing your purpose helps you decide whether or not to proceed with the message. Many business messages have little practical purpose and they should not be composed at all. It would be better to just pick up the telephone maybe and portray that message and convey that message rather than actually going through the effort of writing it down. Or sometimes since they have little practical purpose at that point it might be more useful to put them on hold for some time and then compose them when you have a more practical purpose for them. The purpose might be very vague, it might not be something that will be put in effect so it might just be better not to compose a message at that point. When talking of the purpose you also need to respond to the audience. If you're not certain that your purpose in composing a message is compatible with the audience's purposes then you're likely to deliver irrelevant material. So you need to know the audience's purpose for reading the message and then you can actually deliver the right type of material in your business message. You also need to focus on the content. If you include extra information in your message you're likely to overload the reader. On the contrary if you include very little information in your message you're likely to be providing scanty information and the audience's purpose might not be fulfilled. Also when we talk about establishing a channel and medium you need to decide how the message is going to be conveyed to your audience and that's why the choice of channel and medium has a direct relation with the purpose. It has a direct influence on the purpose. For example, writing a message for a whole department it would most likely be more feasible to email it because it's easy to distribute rather than printing out hard copies of the document in this day and age. So depending on who the audience is, what the purpose is you will determine the channel. If obviously if it's a report that you have to write for your boss and your boss has specifically asked for that report then you might want to print out a hard copy and give it to him so that he can read it and keep it with him and maybe make notes on it. But we'll look at that in more detail as well later. Now the common purposes of business messages are either to inform or to persuade or to collaborate. These are basically the three main purposes of business messages and beyond having a general purpose like informing, persuading or collaborating your message might also have a specific purpose and to determine that specific purpose just think of how your audience's ideas or behaviour should be affected by your message. A lot of times you have to inform for example this is your general purpose but there will also be a specific purpose in which you have to inform and why you have to inform. There has been one more specification so keep in mind that you will compose your message. For example the general purpose as I said could be to inform. The specific purpose could be to present last month's sales figures to the vice president of marketing. There are both purposes but first you generally know that you have to inform. That is an overall picture. You have to tell your vice president something and specifically what exactly you have to tell him are the sales figures of last month. Similarly, if the general purpose is to persuade then the specific purpose might be that you have to convince your marketing director to hire more software engineers. So again you have a general purpose which is to persuade and the specific purpose is that you need to convince your marketing director to hire more software engineers. Similarly, if your general purpose is to collaborate then the specific purpose might be that you want to help the personnel department develop a training program for new members in the software team. So depending on what your general purpose is your specific purpose will obviously be related to that and it will help you focus on your business message. Now how would you test your purpose? Would you need to see if your purpose is realistic? If your purpose involves a major radical change you need to go slow as most people resist change. If obviously if your purpose is to convince your marketing department to hire a lot of new people then your specific purpose can be a radical change. So maybe you need to gradually convince your marketing director that you need so many new people because obviously due to that the company will have a lot of expenses and administration costs will be involved etc. Or maybe if your purpose is to get some people out of the company then it will be even more difficult for you to persuade them. So depending on what your purpose is you need to organize your message in the same way. And accordingly you need to see if your purpose is realistic or not. Whether you are going to tell something or not whether you accept it or not and accordingly you need to organize your message. You need to see if the purpose you are going to convey or the message you are going to convey is the timing correct or not? Is it the right time for this type of a message? So that's why timing matters a lot. An idea is more likely to win approval if for example profits are up for a company. If your idea involves some kind of expansion then obviously if the company is not doing very well then your management is not likely to accept your idea. If also if your message is trying to persuade or convince your readers to do something which involves cost then also it's more likely to win approval if the company is doing well, if the profits of the company are up and therefore you need to keep timing in mind. It's essential. You also need to see how receptive your reader is going to be because of the particular time that your message is being conveyed. So keep that in mind. You also need to see who is delivering the message. Is it the right person who is delivering the message? If you do not have a lot of leverage in your company then you might not really be the right person to convince your management to increase costs for something or to expand. If however you have a lot of leverage if what you say holds great weight you are somebody of importance in a company then even radical ideas that you are giving across in your business message will be accepted. So the person who is delivering that message what is his own standing? It is very important. Some people have more leverage in organizations so they have a better shot at getting the purpose achieved. The purpose is achieved more easily because they are more easily accepted in the company. Some people are accepted with difficulty so the purpose of the message is achieved with difficulty. For some reason if you are in such a situation that your boss does not listen to you or your colleagues do not listen to you then your purpose of the message will be a little different in achieving it. So you will think and compose your own message that I will be different so I will write it according to someone else I will write a direct message. Also you need to see if the purpose is acceptable to an organization. As a representative of your company you are obligated to work towards its goals. Whatever the goals of the company are you need to be loyal to those. So if the purpose of your message is something that is not going to be acceptable to your organization then it might be better not to write that message. Or it might be better to modify the purpose of your message if it is incompatible with your company's goals. When you are analyzing the audience and you are talking about the purpose of the message when you are talking about the audience and you are analyzing the message and you are looking at the audience then you need to ask yourself a question. There are some key questions that you need to ask yourself about your audience. You need to consider who they are and who you are and who your colleagues are and your superiors are and who you are working with and what kind of people are who will read your message. What is their level and what is their company standing and what is their standing with you. What is their probable reaction to your message? How will they react to your message? Are they likely to react in a positive way? Are they likely to react in a negative way? If you feel that they will not accept your message so easily then you need to keep this in mind when you compose your message. And also how much do they already know about the subject? Obviously if you feel that your audience knows a lot about your subject then you have to give little background information. But if you feel that they do not know much about your subject or what you are writing about then you need to give some additional background information so that they become familiar with the subject. As much as they are familiar with the subject which you are writing about then you compose your message. And also you have to see what is your relationship with them. Your boss and employee relationship or your colleagues relationship you are the same level managers or you are in senior position and you have a new junior position. This will also affect the tone or content of your message. When you are analyzing the audience you also need to determine the size of the audience and the composition of the audience. How many people are there in that audience? How many people will read your message? And who are they? When we talk about the composition of the audience we talk about who is the audience composed of? Who does it consist of? So you are writing this message for one person or for ten or a hundred people and who is involved in those ten or a hundred people? Once you have identified that you need to focus on the common interests of the audience. But also you need to be alert to individual concerns as well. So the message you want to write for one person is very easy because there is only one person who is going to read it. But when you want to write a message for a big audience then you need to write according to the audience all the people in that audience need to look at their common interests and their level and according to that they need to understand and react positively to it. And also you need to keep in mind which of these people can react to what kind of questions can arise in their mind about your message. So it becomes more complicated when you are writing for a larger audience. Obviously you need to keep their concerns in mind and you need to keep their common interests in mind. So you have to look at the general level and the individual level as well and that sometimes becomes slightly complicated. When you are analyzing the audience you also need to identify the primary audience. The point is that your message is more than one and you need to define who is the primary audience and who is the secondary audience. The primary audience means the first message and for whom the message is most important. The secondary audience for whom the message will go but maybe they themselves don't take action on it because the message is going to stay in their knowledge and it is not of their primary interest what you have written but they need to be aware of what you have written. So you need to identify within that group of people who will be your audience you need to identify who are most important to your purpose. For example if you have to convince your boss like we said to hire new software engineers and your message is also going to your boss and if you are a manager your managing director and all the other managers who are with you and all the software engineers who work in this company your primary audience will be your managing director and maybe your managers because your MD will consult the other managers in the management meeting whether we hire more software engineers or not but your secondary audience are software engineers who are hired first they will not have a decision they will not take any action on your message but they need to know that this is going to be an addition or an increase so therefore you will write your message and compose your message in such a way that it is understandable and it is of interest to the secondary audience as well but you will write it primarily for your primary audience and focus it to their needs you will also estimate the audience's probable reaction if as in this example if your MD and managers and your software engineers are going to be reading the report or proposal that you have written then you need to gauge, understand how they will react and look at them individually how will the MD react how will the managers react depending on what their interests are and how will the software engineers react to what you are proposing on what you are trying to persuade your MD of each of them might react in a different way because each of them will have their own personal individual and organizational concerns and agendas so you need to have a fair amount obviously you cannot know exactly what everyone is thinking but keeping in mind their roles and how they are most likely to react you will then compose your message in such a way for example if you feel that your audience is going to be skeptical then maybe a gradual approach and plenty of evidence is required if you feel that your message will not be accepted very easily the people who are going to read will have a lot of questions in their mind gradually they will send their message first they will make a background you may need more than one message first you give a background then in the next message you show your actual message or your idea later and for that you will need more evidence for example why is it important that we hire so many software engineers who are existing engineers why can't they complete our work load and what is the need to hire new people if you feel that your audience is not skeptical then you need to give less evidence then you need to give less evidence you also need to gauge the audience's level of understanding how much do they know how much are they likely to understand what you want your message to be if you and your audience share the same general background you can assume that they will understand the subject without any difficulty if however you and your audience share different backgrounds you are a technical person and they are a management person they might not know the technicalities of what you are talking about then you will need to tailor your message in such a way that they find it easy to understand what you are saying if you yourself are not a manager but you are a software engineer and maybe you are a manager but your background is technical and in your report all the technicalities in how many hours the existing engineers are doing this much work and in that you are using the terms of engineering so maybe your other managers or your MD who are not an engineer will not understand my details but when you explain them in man hours so you need to see what is your audience and what is your understanding is your technical background and you need to convey and communicate your message you also need to in your own mind define your relationship with your audience are you communicating with people inside the organization it is obvious that your internal communication inside your organization that communication that communication will be very different from the communication you are talking to people outside who do not work in your company your internal communication at times the internal communication may be very informal however any external communication that you have will always be formal because you are representing your company to the outside world you are actually sending your message outside the boundaries of your organization so you need to keep that in mind as well there is a lot of communication which is both internal and external you are writing for your MD but maybe the company's advisors or consultants or accountants who do not work in the company they are related to the company but they are not a part of the company and then you have to make sure that you do not put any confidential information because you know that people outside will also see it so these things are important and also your relationship with your audience what is your credibility how much credibility do you have with the people who are going to be reading your message do they think of you as a person whose word holds a lot of weight are they more likely to believe what you say are they more likely to accept what you say without question or are they likely to question you because maybe in the past things you have said have not been very acceptable or things that you have said in the past have not been very feasible are they likely to reject your proposals because generally your proposals are way off the mark are they very likely to accept your proposal so every time you give a proposal the company has had benefit by accepting that so if you have a lot of credibility they are more likely to accept what you are saying without having to ask any questions when you are defining the message when you are writing down the message composing it, planning it you need to satisfy your audience's information needs as well what does the audience want to know when they are reading your message every time a reader is about to approach a message they have some preconceived ideas and notions in their mind and they are looking at a message because they want to know something from it if they don't need to read that message then they should never look at it so always keep in mind that the readers they are trying to gain from your message they feel that by reading your message they will get some information so keep in mind what kind of information they are looking for from your message and also you need to keep in mind what does the audience need to know the difference between want and need is very important your audience may want a lot they might want to know a lot of things but what exactly do they need to know you might not want to tell them everything you might not want to give them all the information maybe you just want to give them that information whatever they need if they want that information they get it but whatever they need they get it so keep in mind what they want and need you also need to see if you have provided all the desired and necessary information desired information what they wanted necessary information what they needed and if sometimes what may happen is that as I said you might not want to provide all the desired information because it might be reaching confidentiality it might be putting you on a weak turf it might be making the report too lengthy etc so have you provided all the relevant desired and necessary information you also need to be very sure and check if the information you have provided you do not want to be in a position where you have given information which can be proven false which is wrong so it is very important that the information you have provided is accurate, absolutely correct and it is not a doubt that the information you are giving is wrong because whenever you are writing a report remember that the information has been confirmed always check your information double check so that there is no mistake also keep in mind that you need to emphasize information that will be of greatest interest to your readers when you are giving a message it might be more than one idea so the most important thing for your audience you should emphasize in your sentences, in your paragraphs the most important information should be written in such a way that your readers get the information easily and they understand that this is the important thing and the rest are related to it now when we talk about what the audience wants to know for example if there is a vague request you can restate it in more specific terms precisely if someone has asked for information from you then you should communicate with them by writing orally in the details what exactly you are asking specific information what you want for example if you are working in a computer college and you are asking for student information now you may have 10 different courses or different levels if you are an undergraduate or a postgraduate you can ask your audience if you need postgraduate or undergraduate courses then you will communicate with them it is important to get them to define their needs they might want information but they haven't given you what their needs are so you need to get them to define the needs if there are any unstated questions there are things that the audience or the reader has not asked you directly but they are unstated in the communication then you need to anticipate those a lot of the times you are the one who is initiating the communication it is not necessary that you are asking for something and as a result you are communicating it is very important that you initiate the communication so you have to see which questions that can arise in the reader's mind and first include their answer in your communication any additional information that you feel might be helpful you need to include even though the reader has not asked for it specifically but that doesn't mean give irrelevant information only information that you feel is going to be useful to this reader also when you are looking at the information needs of the audience think have you provided all the desired and necessary information we mentioned this earlier you need to test the completeness of your message when you are asking yourself this question and you want to make sure that it answers all the important questions of who is the reader and what they are wanting when is the message being written where what is the context in which the message is being written why is it being written and how it is being communicated so you need to make sure that you can answer all these questions and therefore fulfill the information needs of the audience accuracy is important you need to make sure that the information you have given is accurate also make sure that the any commitments you are making in your message are those that can be kept do not make any promises that you feel you cannot keep if you are promising something in your letter or report that I can do this for you then write the same thing that you are sure of because if you promise something like this then your credibility will be ruined also check that the information is actually emphasizing the points of greater interest try to figure out what points will specifically interest your audience and then give them more attention by either placing them in the beginning of the paragraph by formulating your sentences in such a way that the reader cannot find the message find the main idea or find what it is that you are trying to say what points you are trying to emphasize then your message becomes incomprehensible so make your message easier to comprehend try to formulate your message in such a way that the reader is easily able to find information that they want devices that make your message easier to comprehend include summaries overviews headings, lists, enclosures appendices, handouts, charts graphs etc so all these things are devices that will make your information more accessible to your reader if one thing is a very complicated aspect in which numbers are very involved or there are a lot of facts and figures then that thing may be applied as a table then the explanation that you have given in the paragraph will be easier to understand similarly if you have any information that you feel that by putting this information in the middle of your report this information is important but it is not so important because the audience attention is excluded from the main idea so you can put that information in appendix and in your text you can reference it in brackets there are a lot of devices that you can use to make your message comprehensible to make your reader easier to understand it is important for your reader to understand what is your main purpose to write that message and what exactly do you want to tell them the whole report will think what was the real purpose so the main idea is very very important it is the hook that sums up why a particular audience should do or think as you suggest your idea until it is not clear your audience will not be convinced but they will not be swayed by your idea or your suggestions in order for you to establish the main idea and for yourself to understand what your main idea is you would need to brainstorm think clearly maybe make a list of all the ideas that are coming in your message and pick out what is the key idea the main idea that links all those ideas together what is the thing that you are trying to convince your reader of because unless you are clear in your mind what you want the reader to pick up the reader will not be clear and your message will not come across well so it is important that the main idea the key point is first of all clear in your own mind and then it is communicated well to the audience a lot of the times we have a general main idea we know that we are going to write about a general topic because we want a particular action to be taken but we cannot focus it enough you should make sure that your main idea is geared to the length of your message you are not talking about something in such broad terms that the receiver cannot understand or cannot pick out what specifically you are talking about if you are going to be talking about income tax that is the general subject but your main idea could be talking about particular changes in the income tax scheme that are affecting your company and how your accounts department needs to deal with that so that then would be the main idea of your message you need to limit the scope whatever is your main idea narrow it down instead of being very broad narrow it down and your message would end up there now coming to the appropriate channel and medium as we talked about it is important because obviously how the message is being communicated affects how the message is received the medium can be oral, written or electronic depending on the purpose and depending on the audience as we talked about earlier now an oral medium what we are talking about that is best when you want immediate feedback many times we are telling something and immediately we want to answer it so it is not better to write because as long as you write the reader may have to read it after a day or two and then it takes time to answer if you want to do it immediately because you have to act on it in such situations it is better to speak and if you want to record then write it in writing sometimes the message is very simple it is a simple thing it is not necessary to complicate that it is written in a written message so it is easy to talk about it many times you may want to talk about it in your company but you don't want it to have a permanent record you talk informally you want to keep it off the record for a lot of reasons maybe for confidentiality maybe because you don't want other people to read it or because you don't want it to come on the record because it will affect your promotion or the way other people perceive about you perceive you etc and then you might just want to communicate orally also sometimes it is easy to assemble your audience if you are communicating orally if you are talking in the office you have to tell a lot of people sometimes it is easy to tell them that you are having a meeting instead of sending a different memo also a lot of the times in business situations you want to encourage interaction when we give a written message it doesn't direct to you if you talk orally your interaction is direct many times you want to give a message like this I can interact with those so that you can see their reaction they can see your reaction sometimes it is because the message is such that it might create misunderstanding if you give it in writing that is why you might want to interact sometimes the message is such that it is good news and you want to give it in person because you want to see the positive reaction of the receiver and that is why you want that interaction so there may be many different reasons for why you want interaction but if you want to encourage interaction then you will deliver the message orally sometimes it happens that if you want to give a message to more than one company then you want to call them so that they interact with each other and they will give you a written message you will give a message in writing when you don't need immediate feedback it is not very important that you get an answer so you will give it in written form sometimes if your message is very detailed and complex and you feel that there is a chance that sending the message orally might cause confusion then you will make sure that the message is in written form sometimes you might want a permanent record you have to put that in a file you need a permanent record because you can ask someone if you want to show it to someone then you will write it if you are trying to reach an audience which is far away from you you might want to use written message this could be in the form of letter email, you might want to fax a report you might want to post it courier it, whatever but it will go in written form also if you feel that the message will go to another and giving it orally might distort the message what you are saying may change because it is better to write it so that there is no mistake now electronic messages is something that we have now and we use very frequently it is a very common form of communication we make reports, presentations send them to people electronically and obviously we have emails which are sent electronically anyway electronic communication is best when you don't want immediate feedback but you want speed you might not want whoever is reading your message to give you feedback on it immediately but you want them to read it immediately there is one thing you have said that you will get feedback immediately then you will do it orally but what you want to tell you want to tell it immediately but if the message comes to you after a few hours then there will be no difference then you will use electronic communication you might not want a permanent record but you want to overcome time zone barriers it is not necessary that you want a permanent record because in electronic communication it is not permanent because it can be changed you have sent something it will not have a permanent record because the person who is reading can change it the word document the person who received the message can change it and file it so it will not have a permanent record but you may want to send for example if you are sending from here to America you work in your day and you cannot wait that you come to the office and call your American colleagues then you will send them an electronically message so that they will come to the office and you want to again as in written messages you want to minimize orally distortion by saying the word as we said earlier things can change and you will give it in written form electronically so basically in this lecture you learnt how to describe the basic tasks in the composition process you learnt how to define both general and specific purposes of your business message you learnt how to test the purpose of your message how to develop an audience profile how to analyze the needs of your audience and also how to establish the main idea of your message you also learnt how to select an appropriate channel or medium from a particular message to a particular audience in the next lecture we will look at how to compose business messages until then Allah Hafiz