Define Your Community—Writer and Reader(s)

Most of us in business have heard the advice to make our communication not “I”-centered but “you”-centered. Business communication textbooks tell us to focus not on the sender but on the receiver. They tell us to write not “I will send you a check” but “You will receive a check.”

That advice is good. But it’s not good enough. It ignores the fact that we in business are never isolated writers or speakers communicating with isolated readers or listeners. We communicate within organizations-ideally, within communities. After all, the words communication and community both come from the same Indo-European roots (ko and mei, meaning “together” and “change”) (We named our company, Komei, Inc., after this fact.) As Peter Drucker says in his classic book, Management, “There can be no communication if it is conceived as going from the ‘I’ to the ‘Thou.’ Communication works only from one member of ‘us’ to another.”

So the best business communication is not just “I”-centered or “you”-centered. It is “we”-centered. To make our letters, memos, and presentations more “we”-centered, we can ask two questions.

The first question is “To what community do my audience and I both belong?” Are we members of the same department? Are we fellow shareholders of the same company? Are we members of the same profession? In short, what makes us “us”?

Try to find the smallest meaningful community that answers this question. The newspaper USA Today has enjoyed great success with its “we”-approach, but sometimes it has made its community too big: when we read headlines like “We’re eating more kelp,” all us non-kelp-eaters suddenly feel left out of the USA Today community.

If it helps, draw a circle on a piece of scratch paper. Label it with the name of the community you share with your audience. Then around that circle, draw circles for any larger communities of secondary audience members. Will a memo for your department, for example, also be read by higher management outside the department?

Add to the diagram an arrow to represent your communication. Are you bringing information into the community from outside? Or are you simply moving information from point to point within the community? Then use your drawing as a visual aid as you start planning your communication.

The second question is “How are my audience and I alike and different?” As you answer this question, begin with similarities and differences in knowledge. Consider the knowledge you share with your audience and the knowledge you don’t share.

In today’s global marketplace, such consideration is more important than ever. Several years ago, a large computer company explained, in a software manual, the concept of a “default value” in a program by comparing it with the “usual” doughnut you get at your regular coffee shop—if you don’t specifically request a muffin instead. A Japanese representative for the company sent a memo back to headquarters: “I have difficulty explaining to my customer what is a doughnut and what is a muffin.”

Consider also your similarities and differences in attitude. What feelings about this communication do you and your audience share? What feelings don’t you share? Some writing and speaking is like paddling downstream, with the current of your audience’s attitudes; some is like paddling upstream, against the current.

Finally, consider the circumstances in which you and your audience find yourselves. If the communication is face to face, the circumstances are obvious: the room, the lighting, the acoustics, the time of day. But the circumstances of a written communication are just as important. Will your letter compete with 25 others on your reader’s desk tomorrow? Or will it be the one letter your reader gets all week?

As we begin to make our communication more “we”-centered, we’ll find that good communication not only requires community; it creates community. After all, the words “We the People” created a community where none existed before. “We”-centered communication helps us follow Tom Peters’s advice, in Thriving on Chaos, to “pursue ‘horizontal’ management” and “involve everyone in everything.” It helps us see ourselves and our readers or listeners not as isolated blocks on a line-and-block chart but as points in a network. In short, it helps us lead ourselves and our organizations into the information age.

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