I love my day-job, but I do have to edit internal communications that has been created by folks who do not have a writing or design background. The teacher in me usually enjoys helping them to understand how to improve their work.

But the teacher in me sometimes just sighs and rolls my eyes.

Yesterday, the head of our Employee Activities Committee (EAC) forwarded a draft communication from another employee regarding an upcoming treat for employees. Let’s just say that the rough draft was more rough than usual:

If I TRIED to pack as many grammar and punctuation problems as possible in a three-line communication, I would be hard-pressed to top this.

I would be even more challenged to write a persuasive statement linking a) the national holiday that commemorates the deaths of millions of armed services personnel with b) the consumption of hot dogs (or Hot dog’s) in the company cafeteria.

The creator of the above email attempted to make the connection by including two images side-by-side: A hot dog with many trimmings (minus ketchup) and a soldier facing a military cemetery, with the U.S. flag superimposed behind the words, “Memorial Day.”

Yes, looking at those war dead makes me salivate in anticipation of the hot dog that awaits me!

I assume that the head of the EAC thought about editing this email, then threw up her hands. Her transmittal note to me was the kicker:

“May I please”? Okay, it’s time to stop complaining and to earn my pay.

May you please comment on the quality of writing you come across in your role?

As I’ve often said, communication is part art and part science, and the announcement yesterday that terrorist Osama Bin Laden has been killed offers an important lesson in the science of communication.

The specific science is psychology, and the specific lesson is that a communicator needs to plan beyond the emotion and hoopla which follow a major victory or defeat.

Dead Terrorist Messages
In the hours following the announced death of Osama Bin Laden, news reports and television pundits focused on the immediate reactions to the announcement by officials and the general public—which in the U.S. involved a feeling of relief and outbursts of celebratory chanting by citizens.

It would be easy to get swept up by the excitement, but if you did, you might overlook some important realities. The search for Bin Laden intensified after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, but even with a massive outpouring of military and intelligence agency resources, it took a decade to locate and eliminate him. The communication lesson is to keep your eye on the entire situation at-hand, because it continues to evolve.

In the case of the “war on terror,” during the years when we were pursuing Bin Laden, he became less and less involved in the operational side of his al qaeda terrorist organization. So we have removed a figurehead of the organization, but we have not mortally wounded its organization. In fact, in the short-run, we may see increased terrorist activity, as Bin Laden “wannabe’s” attempt to increase their “street cred” among fellow terrorists through new acts of terrorism.

Unless those harsh realities are communicated to, and understood by, the general public, the premature celebrations of Sunday evening and Monday morning may soon turn to anguished cries and disillusionment.

Moby Dick
In 1851, American author Herman Melville published a novel titled, “The Whale,” which we today know as the classic, “Moby Dick.” One of the more commonly discussed of the novel’s many themes is the obsession of Captain Ahab to kill the white whale to revenge the sinking of the captain’s previous ship, and the loss of his leg.

Let’s compare Ahab’s obsession to kill the whale with the desire of two U.S. Presidents to capture or kill Bin Laden. In the case of Captain Ahab, the individual obsession killed the individual. In the case of Presidents Bush and Obama, public opinion has been divided as to whether the investment of millions of dollars and hundreds of lives has been worth the results. Negative public reaction to President Bush’s decision to invade Afghanistan and Iraq helped lead to Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election. You might say that Bush’s obsession with Obama (and Saddam Hussein for that matter) led to his eventual political “death.”

If you work as a communicator for someone who is exhibiting tendencies toward obsession over a particular issue or goal, remember these three points:

• Obsession tends to make someone microfocus attention. Keep the big picture firmly in mind.
• People are impatient, so if something is going to take long to accomplish (or remain open-ended for quite some time), explain that clearly at the start, and then regularly as you go along. That might cause some people to spout off, but you will face far less antagonism from the majority of your audience than you would by announcing unrealistic (and unachievable) deadlines.
• Obsession can be a career-killer (or literal killer in the case of Bin Laden and Captain Ahab). Find ways to make your boss understand the current and potential consequences of continuing on a path that won't pay off, or celebrating a victory too soon.

As I recently was putting in my son’s contact lenses, I realized that the experience could be beneficial as a communications lesson.

So just as I embarrassed my daughter years ago by telling a true story about whacking her with a golf ball, I’ll now embarrass my 15-year-old son by talking about how wearing contact lenses is like communicating in difficult times.

First, when I say that I was “putting in my son’s contact lenses,” I mean that I was putting them into my son’s eyes, not mine. He was just learning how to insert and remove contacts, and called for help after several frustrating minutes of trying to insert them himself.

Lesson #1: You should ask for help when you can’t see what you’re doing wrong. No matter how hard he tried, my son couldn’t see why his contact lenses kept bouncing off his eyes. It took the help of an experienced person to take a look from a different angle. In Kevin’s case, he was closing his eyes defensively just before the lens would settle onto his eye. In the communicator’s case, when a program, publication or campaign falls into your hands because it isn’t falling into place, you may need an outside opinion about how to redirect your efforts–and to find out if you’re blinking defensively.

Lesson #2: Which side is up? If you’ve never worn contact lenses, you may have trouble understanding how difficult it can be to discern whether a lens is “inside out.” Only a keen, practiced eye can spot the subtle angles that indicate whether a contact lens is flipped inside out or not. That spells the difference between completing the task in comfort or losing all pretense of sophistication as you shout in agony, “Get it out, get it out”–while you hop around the room, hunched over, frantically trying to remove the wrongly inserted lens from your now extremely irritated eye. Same lesson for communicators: If you don’t have the knowledge or experience to accurately gauge the angles of your project and the people involved with it, you may wind up hopping around a conference room, shouting in agony, “Get me out, get me out.”

Lesson #3: Keep it clean. This may be debated by some communicators, but I believe that just as a clean contact lens prevents irritants from building up, keeping a professional demeanor with coworkers, vendors and anyone who crosses your path can prevent a buildup of irritants in the workplace. Now some people might say that their workplace is full of irritating people, and that’s the way they like it. Okay…and I’ve spit on my contact lens before reinserting it at times when I didn’t have solution. But I didn’t feel good about it, and my eye knew the difference.

Lesson #4: The focus can change over time. Does your strategic communication planning involve using the same basic concepts year after year? Just as eyesight changes over time, communications needs and opportunities change constantly. Give yourself at least an annual checkup to see whether your vision has become a little fuzzy.

Lesson #5: When all else fails, radical surgery is an option. After wearing contact lenses for about three decades, I faced a tough choice. My eyesight and eye shape had finally made it difficult to find affordable contact lenses that balanced comfort with clear vision. So I decided to undergo laser eye surgery. A radical (for me) choice, that has given me great mid- to far-distance vision. Goodbye, contact lenses. If your communication programs just don’t seem fixable, maybe it’s time for a radical change. Just don’t do it without the guidance of an expert!

Lesson #6: Be realistic about the radical choices too. I had a choice with the laser surgery. It would be simple to correct my vision for the mid and far distance vision. But my eyes also have trouble focusing close-up. I had to decide whether I wanted one eye corrected for distance vision and one eye corrected for close vision, or whether to have both corrected for distance, and use reading glasses. I chose the reading glasses. If you need to consider a radical change to your communication programs, you may have to be ready to compromise on the probable results.

How do these lessons look to you?

thought last night about the struggle that my son had with wearing contact lenses for the first time,