Ytdyklly

This is a legit question.

I work in a field where you can get sudden requirements to communicate a lot of highly technical stuff from time to time. Sometimes this stuff is really involved. Like, you can chat with people about it, but you know that the next day you won't have covered all the angles, and half will have been forgotten.

Often you need to be really thorough. You need formal, systematic approaches. A bit like designing a building. You can't just chat about it with the future owners and start muddling through. You need to be able document requirements and so on, produce blueprints, distribute the specs and that.

The problem I am experiencing is that a lot of people will not read. These are highly capable, technical people, but they just will not or can not study technical analyses. They claim they have, but you can just see they have gleaned nothing from it.

My gut feel is that it's often a combination of laziness, hyperactivity or lack of focus discipline, and that this written mode of learning is not good for the individual.

The thing is, I don't see a valid alternative. You can have chats and meetings until you are cyanotic, but the outcomes need to be written and then read. Otherwise when it comes to building complex systems or structures, all you get is a functioning thing whose entire rationale and explanation is nothing more than an ongoing conversation. Change the participants, lose a few key members, and boom your complex system or structure is inexplicable and opaque. The subject of mere speculation.

Well the long and the short of it is that some things need to be communicated in great, great detail. And a lot of people will not read that level of detail when/if it is written. They also seem generally unwilling to participate in meetings where the focus of the meeting is the written subject matter.

What other methods are available to address this problem? I need to think of ways of communicating complex, detailed subject matter (think mathematical proofs on the level of Special Relativity) to people who just don't like to read, get their input, and make sure that it is all recorded in some way so that is available as an ongoing prescription/description.

It sounds as though the level of intricacy and detail of the documents you are writing are above my current pay grade, but as a former middle school teacher I have a few tips that may help. (I had to get kids to try and read too!)

1.) Try creating an outline or bullet point list that will highlight specific aspects of the document you are wanting them to read. By highlighting aspects, and even having open-ended questions in the bullet points, you are allowing people to reference main points of your document. If you use a question in the bullet point it helps to influence the reader to try and answer it for themselves.

2.) As silly as it sounds, bold and italics are a great way to attract attention to the reader and emphasize what you are trying to convey.

3.) Sharing documents and adding comments by shared users allows you to see who is paying attention and who is contributing. If the comments are turned on in Google Docs or other shared applications you are able to gather input from other people who are contributing.

4.) And last, there's good ol' conversation. Ask the people who seem to be slacking if there is a reason they're not fully engaged. Express the importance of documentation, follow-ups, and the attention to detail. Hopefully they are mature enough to understand the importance as well.

Perhaps part of it was your writing style.

I have read and answered many questions on this site, but yours was, in fact, difficult to read. I'm wondering if this has something to do with it.

Even Einstein said "Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler".

• Get down to the level of detail that is necessary, but no more detail
  then that.


• Break things down further into the smallest pieces to read. Make
  sure your fonts are large enough, the colors in any charts are clear
  and that the data is meaningful.


• Break things down into bullet points if possible.


• MAKE IMPORTANT DETAILS STAND OUT


• solicit feedback from your audience.

The problem may be in your presentation. Rule that out first before you ascribe any laziness to your coworkers.

If it is, in fact your presentation, at least that is something you can address. Laziness, not so much

In addition to @MacItaly's great answer, I want to add an additional point:

Make your main point right up front. The first thing someone reads in a long document should be a summary of what the document is about. The first sentence of every section should drive home the point that section is trying to make. All the details that hold that idea together can follow after that.

It's tempting to write a narrative that builds and builds to fulfilling climax before coming to a final conclusion. That's how good stories are written, and really, even the most technical documents are just telling some kind of story (even if that story is as dry as the operational temperature limits of widget Beta-5A). But it's not a good way to convey information you want your readers to absorb because it buries the main point in a wall of text. Don't make your readers dig for the point you are trying to make or their eyes are going to glaze over before they get there (this is especially true in a dry technical document). State it right up front, then fill in the details that support that point.

Mathematical proofs are hard to discuss verbally, though I'm sure I'm not fully imagining your situation.

My suggestions:

• Request written responses in the form of annotations to the
  original document

Giving people time to read the documents, and then write down their thoughts, can help you get more formal, attentive reading sessions from these people. The annotation style makes sure that they are connecting their responses to actual portions of the original document (less scope for misunderstandings, and those that are present will be easier to find).

You mentioned in comments that the people you are describing might prefer not to respond in this way, but it also seems like their preferences are not tenable for you. If you have to make them engage more, this might be a way to make it happen.

• Write collaboratively

People can blow off reading something. That's harder to do if you're writing that thing. If these people are responsible for certain sections, or if you have meetings where everyone goes over sections together, you can probably get them to engage more with the documents. It's sort of like supervision, but very light.

• Ultimately, you can't force intellectual effort

This is more of an aside, but you can't make people think, and there is generally a limit to how much you can condense precise information. If they are not driven enough to do this on their own, then adding some sort of incentive for them to do it might be the only way to get them to volunteer the effort. Some mechanism for rewarding the effort (or punishing failure to make the effort) might be necessary.

I work in a field where similar situations arise. Unlike many answers and probably on the lines of OP's question, it's important to notice that it' not always about your writing. There are technical documents and commercial proposals from third parties that people need to read.

The problem is, if you are the only one reading a document, then nobody values the effort you put in.

The mitigation are case-by-case and depend a lot on your level of authority within the company. If you are a new employee, I'd suggest calling meetings to discuss documents where your highlights are shown in a presentation. You get your point across, but people may still not read the thing. If something you wrote requires attention, don't expect everyone to read in detail (specially if it's something you haven't yourself proofread once), ask a trust worthy colleague now and then, maybe reach to your manager saying something on the lines of "this report needs a reviewer, but I know it's pain to do so, therefore I don't feel comfortable asking a colleague as if it was his favor to me...". If the reading work is actually necessary the manager should assign someone with the reading task and take note if the person does a proper job.

Note however, that maybe all this reading may not be as important as you think, and possibly not everyone has to do it for all reference materials.

If you are a manager, there are other ways to cultivate discipline in the team, but from the question text, this seems not to be the case.

Amazon has a fascinating technique to address a related problem... Don't expect people to pre-read your complex ideas, they simply can't give it the attention it deserves, they're too busy. Instead, write up an executive summary of what's being proposed/decided, call a meeting, have everyone sit there and read it together, then they can ask questions afterward.

"No PowerPoints are used inside of Amazon," Bezos proudly declares. "Somebody for the meeting has prepared a six-page...narratively structured memo. It has real sentences, and topic sentences, and verbs, and nouns--it's not just bullet points."

In his recent letter to shareholders, Bezos details the work that goes into these memos, which he says may take up to a week or more to write and refine:

"The great memos are written and rewritten, shared with colleagues who are asked to improve the work, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again with a fresh mind. They simply can't be done in a day or two."

[...]

"We read those memos, silently, during the meeting," says Bezos. "It's like a study hall. Everybody sits around the table, and we read silently, for usually about half an hour, however long it takes us to read the document. And then we discuss it."