My Communications Journey
Two things about me have significantly influenced my communication journey. The first was I was always a voracious reader. Whether fiction, non-fiction, mysteries, romance, history, even textbooks – it didn’t matter. What mattered was there was always a book waiting to be read. The second is that all my life I’ve always looked up to my oldest brother, John. He was 11 when I was born, and the family story is that I preferred him as my babysitter over everyone even over our own parents. So it came as no surprise that I followed a similar collegiate path to his by majoring in English. While I was in college he told me about this relatively new field of technical writing. I was intrigued enough to take a few technical writing classes in college, and I enjoyed them. Focusing on technical writing appealed to me. Once I moved to the Seattle area to be closer to family (including John), I was intent on getting a job in my field. With my brother’s help once again (by placing my resume on the ‘right’ person’s desk), I was hired at The Boeing Company as a Technical Writer. That was 25 years ago.
Over the course of those 25 years, I have created thousands of deliverables. Functional test documents, software manuals, software application documentation, business processes, online help, websites, project management documents, compliance and audit-related documents, infrastructure documents, testing documents, process flows, newsletters – the list is endless. As are the types of audience, the document structure, the intent, the media used.
And I love it all! I cannot imagine doing anything else.
Nearly all my career I spent as an ‘on staff’ technical writer for a group or organization. What that means is rather than being assigned a specific deliverable, such as a software manual, I handled all the technical writing and communication work for that group or organization. And my ‘contract’ was a year minimum but several times I stayed with the same group for years. I found I much preferred this work option. It provided me the opportunity to become part of the group as opposed to someone just loaned in for a limited time for a specific deliverable. The other big benefit was that by being emmeshed in the group I had a better idea and understanding of the overall technical writing and communication needs of the group. This allowed me to ‘see’ the bigger picture; see how the various deliverables worked together to create the whole. To look at things holistically rather than simply a number of individual documents. This also allowed me to see the communication and documentation gaps within the organization. In fact, much of my work was due to me identifying and addressing these gaps. And this gap work is what made me invaluable to the organization.
In addition, I was often asked to do deliverables simply because I was ‘there’. I cannot overstate how important this aspect was. One of the biggest projects I ever worked on was a Statement of Work Budget Process for an organization with a $200 million budget. The process for identifying statement of work and determining the budget did not exist at the time so the organization was tasked with defining and piloting a process. Because senior management was familiar with my work and because I was already supporting a group within the organization, it was natural for them to ask me to come on board as the technical writer for the project. This was a very strategic and impactful project that, to some extent, is still in use nearly 20 years later. Working on such a project – high level, influential - really opened my eyes to the range and influence of what I could do as a technical writer and communicator.
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However I know that I need to continue to grow my skills. I wanted to stay with a communications-related field for my Masters. I researched various Masters degrees at multiple schools before finally settling on the Communication and Leadership (COML) Masters at Gonzaga. COML fit into what I was looking for, especially with the Strategic Communication & Organizational Leadership concentration. More and more projects are strategic and high-level with interconnectivity amongst projects and across the organization. Increasing my skills and knowledge in these areas will be an immense benefit to me.