Fit for purpose

One of the things we remember from our school days is being told to do the best job possible. When it comes to writing generally, we have a time limit, however, this does not limit the amount of time we can spend reviewing our work. 

As a consultant, I know my clients are conscious of the amount of time I spend on their projects, they know we charge by time. What I have had to do is to learn to produce documents which are fit for purpose. At first, that may sound trite. For me it was not.

I am conscious that blogs are read by people who do not necessarily know me and have the right to expect that they are written well. For some time I have been hesitant to write a blog without treating it like a piece of prose.

I am currently reading Mark Hodgson’s “Time to shine”, (Sydney, 2017). I met Mark in June when he gave a presentation to the Directors Institute. He gave each attendee a copy of this book. Naturally his book covers much more than his 45 minute presentation which focused upon the role of leaders in the knowledge economy.

In his book he reported a startling fact there is now a 90/9/1 rule in the new knowledge digital world of forum such as LinkedIn 90% of the people just view and make no contribution, 9% of the viewing audience will make minimalist contributions such as like and dislike. This leaves 1% of the population to be the thought leaders. This is incredibly scary.

What Hodgson does is challenges all to get out of our comfort zone and make a contribution to the debate. The debate moves rapidly. We will not always have the time or other resources to prepare a well-researched contribution to the debate aware we have well-grounded feelings, or knowledge, we need to be thought leaders.

It scares me to think that a limited few with time on their hands are able to dominate the new information superhighway.

In this new world which requires rapid responses we need to prepare responses which are fit for purpose which communicate our ideas and knowledge to ensure the debate remains robust and does not become dominated by people with their own agenda.

We need to write fix for purpose and for a timely response.

Paul Raftery