Building our report in 3 different voice

We’ve broken every tenet of report writing by assigning different sections to different team members. Our chief stakeholder is on vacation beginning next Tuesday, so we had to move our presentation to Monday. That’s four days less than planned to develop the report and presentation – pretty fast for a company-wide review and analysis. The only area we didn’t look at was HR. Dividing and conquering was required to meet the shortened deadline, but we didn’t take into account that there might be some rough transitions from one voice to the next.

It was interesting to me that the Australian and I have very similar writing styles. A few times during review, I wasn’t certain what she had written versus what I had written. The difference wasn’t apparent until we added in the German’s sections. His style is quite different. The surprising part was that the differences came from the German. He and I are both quiet and reflective types. The Australian is vivacious, talkative, and occasionally breaks out into dance. In other words, my polar opposite (and that makes her very good for me). So what influences our writing styles? Is it because she and I are both customer-facing and we’ve both adapted our style to always communicating with customers, while the German is internally-focused working solely with SAP colleagues? Is it because we are both women and he is male? Is it because she and I are native English speakers and he is English-as-a-second language? It can’t be age, because I’m 6 years younger than he and 14 years older than she. Don’t know why, but it really intrigues me to see that the writing style isn’t aligned to personalities. Oh well. I’ll ponder it some more while reworking this blasted thing to unify the voice.

This weekend, 5 of us are going to New Delhi then Agra to visit the Taj Mahal. I’m really looking forward to it. Can’t believe I have to get on another plane, yet I didn’t think it made sense to come all the way to India and not see the most famous site in the country. We have a tour operator picking us up in Delhi to drive us to Agra, making stops along the way to visit various tourist sites. Best part is it will be a full moon, and Taj is supposed to be amazing under a full moon. I will take lots of pics and try to survive the heat. Weather forecast has the temperature at 107 degrees. Ouch. I’m basically going to melt. As much as I appreciate this experience, I’m glad that it is our last weekend here because it means I’m getting closer to going home.