Make Your Memos Hit The Mark – Featured Article in Buildings Magazine

I’m very happy that my article “Make Your Memos Hit The Mark” is the cover article for the January issue of Buildings Magazine. This is a great US based magazine for both Facilities Managers and Building Managers.

While it’s nice to have your ideas and concepts features by a magazine like Buildings, I’m glad that Buildings is putting focus on the non-technical skills in the industry.

I’ve already received emails and feedback about the article, so it truly ‘hit the mark’.

While the technical side of our business is important, truly successful Building and Facility Managers have good management and business skills. After all, it’s all about managing resources, both internal and contracted, to get results. The ability to communicate, particularly in writing, is an important part of these skills.

The ability to influence means you will get more out of your boss, staff, contractors and occupants or tenants. It’s about being strategic, not just tactical.

One of my favorite quotes about influence by Louis Wyse, and advertising executive, who said:

“The only people in the world who can change things are those who can sell ideas”

If you can influence (and sell) with your writing, you will be much further ahead than your colleagues who can’t. You’ll get your initiatives approved, more capital, better results from staff and suppliers and get your tenants and occupants to agree with you when it matters.

I’ve given a number of workshops on ‘Strategic Writing’ to property and facility related staff, as well as delivering a seminar about it at the IIDEX/Neocon conference in Toronto. I always get good feedback – that they’ve learned how to communicate and influence, not just write. In fact, I focus on communicating, not on fancy grammar and spelling. You can get help for spelling and grammar – it’s the ideas and messages you need to get right in order to influence others.

And even the largest, most sophisticated organizations don’t communicate well. My workshop includes example of really bad communications from some large organizations and I recently saw a memo sent to tenants at a very large, prestigious office tower by a well respected property management firm. It was poorly written, used jargon that only someone in the property/facility management field would really understood and didn’t even make a small attempt to promote the benefits and enhance the image of their company with the communication. What a missed opportunity.

If you want to read the full article, click on the cover image. Please leave a comment below after you’ve read the article. Enjoy.