9. Delivering plain language: structure and responsibilities

Although there is neither the room, nor the need, to say much here about causing organizational cultural change, there are two points worth making because they are particularly related to communication.

9.1 Someone to take responsibility for how the audience receives the message

In most organisations, a team of people contribute to the style and content of a document. Between them, those people have a range of roles. For example, in a financial services organization, those roles typically include: a product manager, a lawyer, an actuary, someone from marketing, someone from customer service, someone representing the distributors who actually deal with potential customers, a designer, someone responsible for some research, a project manager, someone from IT, a printer, … and often a few more.

Yet there is no one whose job is to take responsibility for how the audience will receive the message.⁴⁵

Organisations need to give someone that responsibility. There needs to be someone representing the document's audience who is prepared to sign-off (after any necessary testing):

• that most members of the document's audience will be able to use the document to do what they need to do—that is, that the document works for its audience and its purpose; and

• that the document will enhance the organisation's brand.

The questions then arise: Who should that person report to? How do they fit into the team?