Corporate America can’t build a sentence
Here is an extremely interesting article from this morning’s New York Times detailing how today’s corporate denizens have trouble writing coherent emails.
Here is one from a systems analyst to her supervisor at a high-tech corporation based in Palo Alto, Calif.: “I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information … However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to ‘C’.”
The incoherence of that message persuaded the analyst’s employers that she needed remedial training.
The article also touched on one of my biggest pet peeves: emails conveying bad news. Back when I had a staff, one of the only “rules” I enforced was “all bad news must be delivered in person.” Emails are so easy to misinterpret; the fallout from a poorly written email is often worse than the actual bad news.
(Cross-posted to The Job Blog)
