Collaboration is the hot buzzword these days, when it comes to creating documents. Put your doc in the cloud! Let everyone offer input, in real time! The latest technology makes it possible! 
 
Isn’t that great? 
 
Not so fast. 
 
In this article, we’re going to weigh in on what you might not have considered a contentious topic. It’s not just “Word vs. Google Docs,” as the title of this article has implied. It’s more about “synchronous vs. asynchronous.” More importantly, it’s about creativity vs. chaos. 
 
Back in the old days
 
We feel impelled to set up this story properly. Not very long ago, if you wanted to write something, you fired up Microsoft Word, and you wrote. When you were done, you had a document—a .doc, or later, a .docx—that contained your efforts, and was easy to share. 
 
It wasn’t just Word. There are a zillion other word processors out there, whose features are largely similar. You open them. You use them to write. You end up with a little document file when you’re done. We’ll lump all of these other apps together with Word—the 800-pound gorilla here—since they all operate in basically the same way. 
 
Working in this old-school manner, and knowing, in the business world, that documents are subject to input and revisions, it has always been incumbent on you to handle version control. 
 
That is, you wouldn’t take the doc you’d labored over, and then, while on the phone with your client, simply make all the changes that they suggest, into that original doc. Of course not. What would you do instead? 
 
Before taking down any of the client feedback, you’d do a “Save as...” and create a copy of your document, likely ending its filename with “v2” or something like that. 
 
We’re not losing you on any of this, are we? This certainly isn’t rocket science. 
 
But we’re describing this in detail to set up a point we’re going to make. 
 
Fast forward
 
Google Docs is also like Word, in that, nowadays, there are lots of online/cloud-based word processors that act just like Google Docs. But like Word, Google Docs is the 800-pound gorilla in this space, so we’ll use it as our example here, representing all apps of its ilk. 
 
At first blush, Google Docs is identical to Word. It’s an app (web-based, vs. on-your-computer-based). You open it. You create a new document. And you save it to your Google Drive. 
 
So far, virtually no difference. 
 
But then things change. Since not only Google Docs but the documents you create with it are hosted in the cloud, it’s technically very simple to make documents share-able. Heck, you don’t even have to email them anymore. (Way too much work!) All you need to do is to grant someone else permission to edit your doc, and they can launch their Google Docs, open up your document, and make changes. 
 
So your client can type notes to you right in your doc. Or make their suggested changes, right in your doc. This can even happen while you’re working on it. In other words, you can actually have several people making changes to the same document, at the exact same time.
 
And now, this is nothing like opening Word on your computer and sitting at your screen like a writer. 
 
It’s more like sitting in a committee meeting. Or maybe it’s more like a kids’ soccer game, with all the kids, of both teams, crowded chaotically around the ball. 
 
What’s better? (Or worse?)  
 
“Granting permission” is not some technological breakthrough. It’s been around for as long as there have been computer files. But the notion of making this available for a document that can be revised by multiple people in real time (“synchronous” editing) is relatively new: it coincides with the rise of cloud computing and storage. 
 
You can make a lot of arguments for how great this new technology is. You could say that it eliminates the laborious emailing of documents. It ensures a “single source of truth,” since the very latest version of the document is all that anyone sees. It makes sure that no one is working on an outdated version. And plus it creates unprecedented transparency: Everyone can see what everyone else is doing, in real time. Surely you’ve seen this: A little circle with someone else’s initials in it, showing them selecting text, or adding new verbiage, or whatever, like a multi-player online game. 
 
Now the big question: Does this make the document better?
 
Follow-on question: Is this process better? 
 
We’d argue that the answer to both of these questions is “No.”
 
Writing a document is not a democratic exercise. You’ll hear about a document’s “voice”—not its “crowd.” A good document has structure and logic. If various people are all tinkering with different parts of it at once, the final product will collapse like a house of cards. 
 
And what about all those worthless outdated versions that are now history? Well surprise: They’re not worthless. More often than not, you want to look at Version 2 when you’re working on Version 4, to see what was there before it changed: Not all movement is forward, and not all change is progress. 
 
Yes, there is a degree of “version tracking” baked into these web-based word processors. But it doesn’t offer the control or granularity of the iconic “Save as...” command. 
 
And not to sound too pretentious, but how many hands does it take to hold a paintbrush? We’d prefer to get client feedback on a doc, interpret it to the needs of the doc, and then implement it carefully, rather than seeing an anonymously-named editor (“Wombat,” anyone?) arbitrarily adding and cutting. 
 
What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you agree with us? Want to try and convince us otherwise? Contact us. We’d love to hear from you. 

​A client of ours recently wanted us to rewrite their team members’ LinkedIn bios, and then their website bios, in that order. 
 
Would you do the same thing? Should you? In that order? 
 
In this article, we’ll look at some of the too-easy pitfalls of team bio-writing, and also give you some good, quick, useful tips that can help you look great, and drive more business. 
 
Who’s on first?
 
When that client asked us to start with the LinkedIn bios, we suggested otherwise. In this instance, it was better to start with the company’s own website. 
 
That’s because it was more free-form, less rigid than LinkedIn. We could do whatever we wanted. We could steal from it, for LinkedIn, later. 
 
And that’s what we did. 
 
For your business, you want your and your team’s bios to effectively accomplish two things: 

1) You want to establish that person’s credibility. Do they know their stuff? Are they the absolute go-to subject matter expert for their field? 
 
2) You want to make them come across as likable. (Not that they aren’t already.) The goal here is for the reader to think, “If I’m gonna be working with this company for the next several months, I’d be happy to work with this person. They seem cool.” 
 
Teaser alert: You can actually address both of these goals in order. But we’ll get to that in a minute. 
 
Person to person
 
As you surely know, some website bios are written in first person (“I’m in charge of Finance”), whereas others are written in third person (“Jill is in charge of Finance”). 
 
Which should you use? 
 
(By the way, “Which should you use?” is in second person. But we digress.) 
 
Consider the arguments for each: 

• First person comes directly from the person whose bio you’re reading. It’s like they’re talking to you: “I’m in charge of this. I do this each day. I’m a nice person because of blah, blah, blah.” 

 

• Third person reads as if someone else wrote it. It’s a little more distant. It doesn’t speak directly from the subject, and to the reader. 

 
So this seems easy, right? “First person” carries the day. 
 
Not so fast. 
 
Think of Goal 1 from above: Establish Credibility. Here, you’ll want to blitz the reader with name-dropping and awards and accolades, so there’s absolutely no ambiguity about how technically superior this person is. 
 
Uh-oh. If you write that in first person, it comes across as conceited. Really conceited: 
 
“I have won awards for my work with major enterprises worldwide such as Coca-Cola and Amazon, where clients always told me how great I am.”
 
Uggh. Don’t go there. 
 
And so, third person it is. More often than not: 
 
“Jill has won numerous client-elected awards for her stellar performance working with major enterprises worldwide such as Coca-Cola and Amazon.”
 
The second act
 
As we’d hinted above, the bio follows a two-act structure, in the order of the two goals ("Expertise," and "Fun to Work With"). 
 
So after you’ve wowed your reader with all the awards and name-dropping, you can get into just a few interesting, quirky details which are nice setups for conversation-starters when a client first engages you. We recently read the bio of a client we were going to work with, and it noted that she had previously served in an exotic location overseas, so we were curious to ask her about that. 
 
Stuck for ideas—or for getting consistent responses from your team—for this Act II assignment? We once helped an ad agency write their team bios, and we worked up a questionnaire which was circulated to the entire team. The initial questions were predictable: 

• What’s your title? 

 

• What’s your role? 

 

• What do you in a typical day? 

 
But then, to button it, we made the last question a fill-in-the-blank: 

• People think I’m crazy because... 

 
They loved it. The answers were great and off-the-wall, and there was hardly any work required to edit them down to make them website-palatable. Indeed, the ad agency kept the “Questionnaire” format on their website—a good example of when First Person actually is the better way to go. 
 
Tying it all up
 
Some basic pointers: 

• Keep them short. No one wants to read a novel. They don’t care about what year you got that degree. 

 
That said, leaders’ bios should generally be longer than team members’ bios. Twice as long is completely fine. 

• Steal for LinkedIn. You did all your work, working up the facts; now you can effectively export those to LinkedIn, hewing to their format. Note that if you’d opted for First Person, you might want to shift to Third Person for LinkedIn. 

 
And that’s about it. It sounds simple, but it’s really more straightforward than easy. The more succinct the bio, the better—and the more challenging. 
 
Need help? Contact us. We’ve helped lots of teams with tons of bios. And we’d be delighted to help you, too.