Talk the Talk and Walk the Walk
How, you may ask, are we to add value to something as “intangible” and “immaterial” as our language and communication work?
To put it provocatively, as long as your language and communication work remains “intangible” and “immaterial”, well, you probably cannot. Robert S. Kaplan (famous Baker Foundation Professor at the Harvard Business School) supposedly said – among many other wise things:
· If you can't measure something, you can't control it
· If you can't control it, you can't change it
· If you can't change it, you can't improve
· If you don't improve, you go out of business
Even if we might not like the underlying idea or the implications of the quotation, we are quite sure that many of us have at some time or other felt the very harsh reality of it.
Thus, the very first item on your to do list, is to make your language and communication efforts “tangible” and “material” – to make it measurable, so to speak. That is a thing much easier said than done.
Allow us in this connection to invoke one of the grand “old” ladies of PR, namely AIDA. I.e. you want to raise Awareness, create Interest and Desire and subsequently provoke Action. The idea being that it is not enough that you raise your manager’s – or who ever is funding the language and communication efforts of your organization – awareness, create interest and desire; no, you need for her to take action, too. It is not sufficient that she talk the talk, she needs to walk the walk. And who is there to guide her through that process other than the expert, in other words: you?
Is there a lot work involved in this? You bet there is! Will it be an uphill struggle? We are afraid so – but then again: Judging from the articles in this issue of “Language at Work – Bridging Theory and Practice” there seems to be a strong tendency in business and academia towards not only recognizing the crucial role that language and communication play but also a growing realization that linguistic and communicative quality pay off.
In this issue of “Language at Work – Bridging Theory and Practice” the editorial board is proud to present some of the finest researches and professionals within the field of “value added”. Some of our colleagues, in other words, who have dedicated their time and effort to not only promote the idea that language and communication can give a “return on investment”. No, they have actually demonstrated it!
Dear reader, enjoy YOUR magazine!
Peter Kastberg, Ph.D., Director of the Research Group for Knowledge Communication, The Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus, Denmark
Annelise Grinsted, Asscociate Professor, Ph.D., The University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
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