How Non-writers Write: Assembling Monthly Reports

in a Highly Contingent Environment

Clay Spinuzzi

University of Texas at Austin

@spinuzzi

About Me...

Spinuzzi, C. (2010). Secret sauce and snake oil: Writing monthly reports in a highly contingent environment. Written Communication 27(4): 363-409.

Background

“man will find himself [sic] liberated, a stranger in a new free-form world of kinetic

organizations. In this alien landscape, his position will be constantly changing, fluid, and varied. And his organizational ties, like his ties

with things, places, and people, will turn over at a frenetic and ever-accelerating pace.”

“managers are losing their monopoly on decision-making”

Adhocracies

1970, p.125, 140

Improving Adhocracies

Drucker 1993, p.40

“from now on, what matters is the productivity of non-manual workers. And that requires

applying knowledge to knowledge.” (Drucker 1993, p.40)

“Knowledge is becoming the defining characteristic of economic activities” (Burton-

Jones 2001, p.4)

Integrated Writers•Own processes and routinely combine

knowledge, methods, and information with processes.

•Examples: engineers, general managers, accountants, health technologists.

•Don’t see themselves as writers, but integrate writing with other tasks across the organization.

•Their writing tasks are often vital, especially as work becomes increasingly textualized.

Integrated WritingProducts are automated, then customized to create specific value for a given customer (Castells 2003).

Drivers:

•More networked workplaces

•More internal work becomes more accessible by external actors (customers, clients, contractors)

•More boundary-crossing, more interplay among activities, and more cross-functional teamwork.

“Semoptco”: A web marketing company in Austin

Search Engine Optimization

“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or

quality of traffic to a web site or a web page (such as a blog) from search

engines via ‘natural’ or un-paid (‘organic’ or ‘algorithmic’) search results ...”

Wikipedia, “search engine optimization”

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/hidden-gay-slur-search-terms-get-campaign-site-blacklisted.ars

The Case StudyHow do people at Semoptco manage projects?

•Three-month case study

•Interviews, observations, artifact collection

Five participants:

•Stan, Director of Product Services

•Daria, Senior Specialist in Natural Search

•Luis, Senior Specialist in Natural Search

•Carl, Specialist in Natural Search

•Stacy, Account Manager

Projects at SemoptcoLaunch: Kick off campaign, examine needs,

formulate keywords and goals, plan goals.•Account manager and 1-2 specialists•Small set of standard milestones•About 4 weeks

Maintenance: Analysis, reporting, meeting, link building.•Primarily a specialist; “lone wolf”•Weekly, monthly, sometimes yearly cycles•Periodic coordination with account manager•No milestones - but long-term performance goals and constant problem-solving

Integrated Writers

Integrated Writers•Each SEO specialist writes up to 10-12

complex 20-page monthly reports in the first ten business days of each month.

•Each specialist also puts together presentations for monthly meetings with clients.

•Each specialist also corresponds with clients, builds links, and does other types of writing.

•None see themselves as “writers.”

Flux and Flexibility

Flexibility through Constant

Customization“Innovation is the primordial function” (Castells 2003, p.100)

“The Internet is the essential tool to ensure customization in a context of high-volume production and distribution” (Castells 2003, p.77)

“[Projects are] all very different” (Stacy, Account Manager)

… and I mean constant.•Highly volatile, contingent work

•“You're never sure what you're going to be doing the next day.” (Daria, Senior Specialist)

•Factors: algorithm changes, news items, competitors, new technologies, etc., etc.

•Consequently, discretion and autonomy pushed to specialists' level

Project teams

Apprenticeship teams

Project teams

Support teams

Project teams

Functional teams

Project teams

Values teams

Project teams

Taco club

Project teams

Aggregate networks

Extending the network

“I’ve got friends in med school.” (Daria, Senior Search Specialist)

"In your industry, do you call it this or this?" (Daria, Senior Search Specialist)

"Jewellery" (Carl, Search Specialist)

Integrated Writing

Self-programmable vs. generic labor

Self-programmable labor: Labor involving unique problems that workers must solve.

Generic labor: Routinized processes that can be automated or outsourced.

Turning one into the other:

•Internally refining and automating resources

•Internally developing new resources

•Scouting for new resources

Self-Programmable(High Operational

Discretion)

Generic(Low Operational

Discretion)

Competitors table Social bookmarks

Action Items in Semoptco's monthly

reports

“Report cards” (autogenerated

statistics)

“Self-programmable labor has the autonomous capacity to focus on the goal assigned to it in the process of production, find the relevant information, recombine it into knowledge, using the available knowledge stock, and apply it in the form of tasks oriented toward the goals of the process. ...” 

Castells 2009, p.30.

“... tasks that are little valued, yet necessary, are assigned to generic labor, eventually replaced by machines, or shifted to lower-cost production sites, depending on a dynamic, cost-benefit analysis.”

Castells 2009, p.30.

Integrated Writers and Writing

•Integrated writers produce an astonishing amount of text.

•They solve problems and automate solutions (turn self-programmable labor into generic labor) via constant innovation.

•Networks allow them to share these innovations.

•The innovations support integrated writing, allowing them to customize automated texts for specific customers.

Two more things…SIGDOC 2012, Seattle, WA, Oct. 3-5, 2012

•http://sigdoc.org/2012

•Papers due June 1

TCQ special issue: Contemporary Research Methodologies in Technical Communication

•http://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2011/09/tcq-special-issue-contemporary-research.html

•Proposals due February 15, 2013

Questions?