Are you settling for too little?

Remem­ber the Greek myth of Icarus?

Mas­ter craft­man Daedalus craft­ed a set of wings made out of wax and feath­ers for his son, Icarus, so that he could escape Crete. Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun or his wings would melt. Icarus didn’t heed his father’s advice and end­ed up soar­ing too high. His wings melt­ed, he plum­met­ed to the ocean, and died.

The cau­tion­ary tale that we learned from the sto­ry: lis­ten to your par­ents, don’t dis­obey your elders, and don’t dis­re­gard the rules.

Writer and busi­ness mar­keter Seth Godin argues in his book The Icarus Decep­tion that there’s anoth­er part of the myth that isn’t wide­ly known. Daedalus also remind­ed his son not to fly too close to the ocean because the water would ruin his wings.

Writes Godin: “It’s far more dan­ger­ous to fly too low than too high, because it feels safe to fly low. We set­tle for low expec­ta­tions and small dreams and guar­an­tee our­selves less than we are capa­ble of. By fly­ing too low, we short­change not only our­selves but also those who depend on us or might ben­e­fit from our work.”

He argues that cit­i­zens need to fly high­er than ever, not “play it safe.” He spends most of the book argu­ing that economies reward art, not com­pli­ance. In the past, work­ers were reward­ed for play­ing by the rules. Not any more.

Godin argues that the fol­low­ing traits are impor­tant in the new economy:

Trust and per­mis­sion: We do busi­ness with those indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions that have earned our atten­tion. “We seek out peo­ple who tell us sto­ries that res­onate, we lis­ten to those sto­ries, and we engage with those people…who delight.”

Remark­a­bil­i­ty: We are drawn to those com­pa­nies or indi­vid­u­als that stand out, who are dif­fer­ent. No one sits around talk­ing about the com­pa­ny or per­son who blends in with every­one else.

Lead­er­ship: Lead­ers are com­pa­nies and indi­vid­u­als who take risks and take us all to a dif­fer­ent place. An obvi­ous exam­ple is Steve Jobs, who rev­o­lu­tion­ized how we lis­ten to music and over­saw the cre­ation of the iPhone and iPad.

Sto­ries that spread: This involves deliv­er­ing a mes­sage that is worth­while to spread. “After trust is earned and your work is seen, only a frac­tion of it is mag­i­cal enough to be worth spread­ing. Again this mag­ic is the work of the human artist, not the cor­po­rate machine,” writes Godin.

Human­i­ty: Instead of focus­ing on just the cheap­est prod­uct, we focus on orig­i­nal­i­ty and car­ing instead.

How do these traits apply to tech­ni­cal communications?

Cred­i­bil­i­ty and trust: We must ensure that the con­tent that we write is tech­ni­cal­ly accu­rate. Not real­ly sur­pris­ing, giv­en that this is the pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty of our jobs. When I start­ed in this career, I tend­ed to rely on Sub­ject Mat­ter Experts to vet my con­tent. Some SMEs are excel­lent at review­ing tech­ni­cal doc­u­ments; most don’t have the time or inter­est to review large doc­u­ments. I real­ized that it’s ulti­mate­ly up to me to make sure the con­tent is as accu­rate as pos­si­ble. Over time, I try to immerse myself in the sub­ject so that I become a qua­si-SME on a sub­ject.  In addi­tion, I strive to do what I say I will do. It is sim­ple advice but it’s sur­pris­ing how many peo­ple will say one thing and do anoth­er. Or do nothing.

Remark­a­bil­i­ty: Scan most tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion job adver­tise­ments and com­pa­nies want some vari­a­tion of the fol­low­ing skills:

• Expe­ri­ence with dif­fer­ent author­ing tools: Word, FrameMak­er, Mad­cap Flare, Acro­bat, Robo­Help, Share­Point, Cap­ti­vate, and so on.
• Demon­strat­ed writ­ing skills and a relat­ed cer­tifi­cate or degree.
• Abil­i­ty to jug­gle mul­ti­ple priorities.
• Abil­i­ty to work well with others.
• Demon­strat­ed self-starter.
• And so on…

For a giv­en job, let’s say 20 can­di­dates apply for the job, includ­ing you. How are you dif­fer­ent? What skills and per­son­al­i­ty do you pos­sess that are dif­fer­ent than the oth­er can­di­dates? Being the same as every­one else—essentially blend­ing in—is not a strength. Per­haps you have expe­ri­ence writ­ing con­tent for mobile? Have you worked as an instruc­tion­al design­er or busi­ness ana­lyst? Do you have deep domain knowl­edge on a giv­en sub­ject? Is your atti­tude a dif­fer­en­tia­tor? Do you guar­an­tee your work?

I’d sug­gest you think about and cul­ti­vate your dif­fer­en­tia­tors so you stand out from the pack.

Mak­ing con­nec­tions: Tech­ni­cal writ­ers gen­er­al­ly aren’t the life of the par­ty. They don’t go out of their way to con­nect with oth­ers. They focus on their deliv­er­ables, not fos­ter­ing a network.

There are excep­tions. There’s one writer I know who real­ly makes an effort to meet oth­ers for a cof­fee. He enjoys it. And he ben­e­fits from this effort: he fre­quent­ly hears of con­tract jobs before they are adver­tised. Oth­er writ­ers rec­og­nize that he excels at networking.

As writ­ers, we could all ben­e­fit from mak­ing con­nec­tions with oth­ers, whether it’s anoth­er writer, or anoth­er con­trac­tor on your team, or a poten­tial employer.

Do you agree? How can tech­ni­cal writ­ers demon­strate trust, remark­a­bil­i­ty, lead­er­ship, sto­ry­telling, and an abil­i­ty to make connections?