Setting the tone

Giving readers the message you intend

Hey, everyone!

I write extensively* about various writing issues I discover in the wild, then show you how to avoid similar mistakes. Today, I will share a towering, career-defining experience I once had with tone.

Tone

Tone refers to how your sentence structures, word choices, and language make your readers feel. For example, "Hey, peeps! How's it hangin'?" has a more relaxed and friendly tone, whereas "Dear, Mr. Peep and associates, Do you dress left or right?" sounds more formal and stodgy and is probably something you should never say.

Before I get into the details of my politically brilliant and masterful use of tone, I need to provide a couple of definitions.

OKRs

In the 90s, the CEO of Intel, Andy Grove, created a planning model called OKRs that his teams could use to make and track goals. The O in OKR stands for Objective and means a statement of want. For example, "I want to learn to play the piano."

The KR part of OKR stands for Key Results, which are one or more measurable actions you will take to accomplish your Objective. Let's build an example OKR to illustrate how you would use them.

OBJECTIVE: "I want to learn to play the piano."

KEY RESULT 1: "I will start taking piano lessons every week for a year."

KEY RESULT 2: I will practice two hours a day."

Once you have defined your OKR, you start acting on the Key Results and monitoring your progress. For example, did you attend your piano lesson this week? If so, you've succeeded at that Key Result for the week. Then, you keep working on and monitoring your progress on your Key Results until you have achieved your Objective: Chopsticks!

Now, with that corporate carrot to the eye past us, I'll share my writing genius.

The document

I struggled to implement my quarterly OKRs in a third-party web application my company used for almost a month. I'd work to define all my Objectives and Key Results only to discover I had statements of want in my Key Results and a plastic giraffe in my Objectives. I couldn't have been more confused. But I wasn't the only one struggling. It was a company-wide issue.

One day, while pounding my head against the problem for nearly three hours, an epiphany smacked my brain, and everything fell into place. I finally understood!

I finished my team's OKRs and then finished my own. They were beautiful! I wanted everyone in the company to taste my sweet success, so I wrote a detailed explanation, complete with pictures, examples, and charts, explaining to the company how to write OKRs in the software we were using.

At the end of the document, I offered to create a presentation around my discovery and teach the rest of the company how everything should work. My message was perfect. It would ensure no one in the company would ever be frustrated again. Finally, I included my well-crafted document in an email to the CEO, CTO, and VP of Engineering and hit Send.

My message began:

"How we're doing OKRs as a company is completely wrong."

I don't think there are enough "I"s in the universe to accommodate the massive sigh this introduction deserved. First, I told the VP of Engineering that he was wrong. I then let the CTO know that he was wrong. Then, to drive that last nail in the coffin of my self-respect, I told the CEO she was wrong.

What was the big takeaway for everyone who received my email? I can tell you it didn't have anything to do with OKRs.

The challenge

One of the most important things you can do as a writer is to know your audience and adjust your tone accordingly. The tone in your writing can be the difference between veneration and scorn.

For today's challenge, see if you can improve my tone-deaf sentence and post your solution in the comments.

*OK. I probably shouldn't use the word "extensively" since I've only been writing this blog for a week. In my defense, though, it has been an extensive week.