How much B.S. should I put into this presentation?

C.P. Campbell

doi:10.1109/47.503274

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication Jun 1996

How much B.S. should I put into this presentation?

C.P. Campbell New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

Abstract

Recently graduated engineers are apt to go to work in groups led by more seasoned engineers. When a new engineer gets a reporting assignment from the group leader, she is likely to assume that the group leader is her audience. That is a comfortable assumption, since the group leader speaks her language. But, it is false to assume that the immediate audience is the real audience. The new engineer's report may have to fit, for example, in a report where the aim is not technical analysis but economic justification. Writing for an unaccustomed purpose is a little like learning how to get along in a foreign culture. New engineers take pride in their work, and the familiar technical reporting format (background, problem, method, results, conclusions) lets them explain it in detail. They may feel chagrin when somebody up the line rewrites their results section and relegates the rest to an appendix or the wastebasket. It is wrenching to discover that in the corporate culture, everything but the results is looked on as BS. That is because engineers are logical people. When young, they expect the world to be logical too. And maybe it is, but its logic is not that of the linear mathematical demonstration. Organizations, like Newtonian flywheels, have inertia; the bigger they are, the more they resist changes in speed and direction. A large organization presents the same paradox as a government request for proposals: it says it wants innovative ideas, but then spells out in excruciating detail what it expects you to do.

Journal: IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Published: 1996-06-01
DOI: 10.1109/47.503274
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Open Access: Closed
Topics: professional writing
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How much B.S. should I put into this presentation?

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