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Revisions, Please
By Karen Irving | September 22, 2009
A few weeks back, a client emailed me a fairly long list of major revisions to a report I’d sent her. It took me by surprise—I’d reviewed that document myself, tinkered with it and polished it, and I thought the finished product was pretty darn good. What was she doing, sending it back?
Our company stands behind its work, and each of our contracts includes a provision for a round of revisions, if necessary. So I set to work to make the changes. I have to admit, though, my heart wasn’t exactly filled with joy.
Let’s face it: no one likes to be told, “No, your work isn’t good enough. Take it back and fix it.”
And in a company like ours, where we’ve spent 25 years building our reputation on a high volume of fast-turnaround, carefully tailored and crafted reports, a request for extensive revisions can feel an awful lot like the client is saying, “You’ve failed me.” It’s not a feeling I like, and it’s certainly not one I’m used to.
That got me thinking about why, exactly, I was feeling so wounded about these revisions. And that got me thinking about how much our editorial department, and our editorial standards, have shifted over the past several years.
You probably know the old adage about how to boil a frog: if you drop the poor beastie straight into a pot of hot water, it’ll hop right back out again. But if you put it into a pot of cool water, and raise the temperature gradually, it’ll fail to notice the change, and will eventually boil to death. While I’ve never cared for this image (I’ve often wondered why anyone would want to boil a frog in the first place), I get the point—incremental changes, sometimes barely noticeable at the time, can lead to dramatic results over the long term.
And in the case of the returning document, I realized I was playing the role of the boiled amphibian. Here’s how.
A few years back, when I first took over the role of managing editor, we made some changes in our editorial process. Rather than simply assigning each report to an editor, then giving it a quick check before sending it out to the client, we moved to a new system. These days, when a document comes back from its field editor, a senior editor reviews it carefully, catches any stray bits the field editors might have missed, adjusts the text for nuance or emphasis, ensures the formatting looks as good as it can, and generally checks to be certain the report lives up to our (admittedly picky) quality standards. This is the first draft we send to the client.
It doesn’t sound like much, really—all we did was add a layer of quality control. But the effects have definitely become noticeable.
In the old days, each crazy-busy conference season would be followed by a corresponding onslaught of reports, returning to us for revisions. Some would require minor tune-ups; others needed full-scale overhauls. But the cycle was always the same: Work like mad to cover the conference, edit the work, and meet the deadline. Take a breath, but not a long one. Then settle in for Revision Season.
When we initiated our new editorial review system, that pattern began to shift. Gradually, fewer and fewer reports sloshed back over the transom, and most of those that did required only very minor tweaks.
I guess I didn’t fully grasp the magnitude of the change until that returning project showed up on my desk a few weeks ago.
As I thought about it, I realized: no wonder I was disappointed to see that report again. After all, we haven’t had a Revision Season in a good long time.
And just between you, me, and the gatepost, I really can’t say I miss it.
Topics: Conference Content, The Conference Publishers, Virtual Meetings |