My Work Log

While I have always harped on a the way you present material which flows out of your mailbox (like docs, ppts, xls, vsds, mpps etc.) ………….I would also like to quote Stephanie Kreiger – the author of ‘Advanced Microsoft Office Documents – Inside Out’ where she says ………………

” A poorly crafted business graphic is like wearing sweaty gym clothes to walk the red carpet at the Academy Awards.  You’ll definitely get attention, but is that really the impression you want to make?”

Elsewhere she also mentions …………its the content that matters and the way you present it. These should only go to hilight the content and not kill it or hilight it in the wrong way.  She compares it to a lady with good body features – who chooses an attire and jewellery ……..to hilight her features and not to hilight the attire itself. 

She also quotes Coco Chanel ……”Dress sharply and they notice the dress. Dress impeccably and they notice the woman.”

So it is very mandatory to choose the appropriate kind of way to present whatever you want to present. 

We tend to ignore the way we compose our mails.  We are okay if it is less than perfect.  We do not realize that our emails are the brand ambassadors which carry our image internally within and across the organization. I am not going to get into email etiquette ……..but would definitely like to leave the reader thinking about how perfect do we really bother to compose our emails.

I recently received an email from a colleague ………..who is quite a perfectionist.  This is the email I received:

Hi All,

                Please find below the activity sequence and coverage for the Cairo visit.

Let me know if there are any activities missing – which we may add.  Please note that although the initial part of the activity sequence covers Smart Cards – the later part of the activities is to cover both the Portal and Smart Card discussions.

Regards

…

 Now I would leave it to the readers to interpret this mail.  Do you feel this was overkill – that the author was resorting to pictorial representation of something which could have otherwise been represented as a drab bulletised list or a table of some sort. 

Yours truly thinks that picture was appropriate and well represented ……………and even complimented the author of the email.  It did create a minor split amongst the recepients of the email.  Some applauded ……and some thought it was grossly unnecessary.  But what do readers think?