OABC: A Pattern for Clear Business Communication

If I were to come to your front door and invite you to go for a ride, what would you say? Probably something like, “Where are we going?” If I were then to say, “I’m not going to tell you,” you would likely respond, “Uh, I’m pretty busy right now. Sorry.”

The idea that I would invite you to go for a ride and not tell you our destination seems completely unreasonable. Yet that is what many of us do when we sit down to compose a message to someone else. We simply start writing and don’t tell our readers where we’re going. An example follows:

“Hi Tom. Yesterday I met with Jenny about the deadlines we’re facing on our product-improvement launch scheduled for March 10. I expressed concern that her developers are falling behind on their product-improvement deadlines and that missing this launch date would be a huge problem for our company. Marketing has been preparing a major event for the launch, and to miss the deadline would be disastrous. Our clients have been asking for these improvements for many months, and we simply have to respond to their requests. Jenny said her developers have been sidetracked from their work several times to work on bug fixes for the last release and that the fixes had to take priority. I tried to emphasize the critical importance of the new improvements. Jenny said she understood our situation and would try to do the best she could to meet our needs. I suggested that we have a meeting with her and her developers each Monday to review progress. That way we can know what’s going on with the developers, and we can continue to stress the need to meet deadlines, even if it means working overtime or hiring some temporary help. She agreed to that and the first meeting is scheduled for next Monday at 9 a.m. in Creekside Conference Room. I hope you can attend.”

The preceding message seems to have the appropriate content, but the organization needs work. The unfortunate reader of the message has to blindly follow all the twists and turns in the road until finally arriving at the destination. In a sense, the writer said, “Let’s go for a ride, but I’m not going to tell you where I’m taking you.”

Enter OABC

If you think this might be a problem in your writing, consider using an OABC pattern. Whereas the first example has an opening, a body, and a closing, OABC writing has an opening, an agenda, a body, and a closing. See what a difference an agenda can make:

“Hi Tom. Yesterday I met with Jenny about the deadlines we’re facing on our product-improvement launch scheduled for next month. The following paragraphs include my concerns, Jenny’s response, and our plan to address the problem.

Regarding my concerns, I told Jenny that her developers don’t seem to be current with their product-improvement deadlines and that missing this launch date would be a huge problem for our company. Because our clients have been asking for these improvements for months, and marketing has been preparing a major event for the launch, missing the deadline would be disastrous.

Jenny said her developers have been sidetracked several times to work on bug fixes for the last release and that the fixes had to take priority. However, Jenny said she understood our situation and would try to do the best she could to meet our needs.

To resolve the problem, I suggested that we have a meeting with Jenny and her developers each Monday to review progress. That way we can keep current on the developers’ progress, and we can continue to stress the need to meet deadlines—even if it means working overtime or hiring some temporary help. Jenny agreed to this meeting idea, and our first meeting is scheduled for next Monday at 9 a.m. in Creekside Conference Room. I hope you can attend.”

Why Use OABC?

Including an agenda after opening a message can work wonders, both for the writer and for the readers. For the writer, an agenda serves as an outline that guides the structure and development of the subsequent content. The agenda also serves as a contract with the reader, and the writer’s content and structure are thereby made clear, as demonstrated in the second message example.

For readers, an agenda provides a roadmap for the textual trip they are taking with the writer. In the second message, the agenda tells the readers they’re going to encounter three segments on the trip—the writer’s concerns, Jenny’s response, and a solution to the problem. In a sense, an agenda creates mental storage buckets for placing the subsequent material. An agenda also makes messages more skimmable, so readers who don’t care about some parts of the message can skip directly to the parts they are most concerned about—in this case, the solution.

Agendas can be written in one or more of the following four forms. (Did you notice that I just used an agenda to introduce the list?)

• Quantify: “Remember the following four elements of this new procedure. . . .”
• Identify: “Our staff meeting will include the introduction of new employees, a review of last month’s performance, and the introduction of goals for next month.”
• Organize: “Our audit identified the following problems, listed in order of importance.”
• Combination: “Here is my assessment of our final three candidates (James, Kristen, and Mark), listed in order of preference.”

Obviously, an agenda is not needed for very short messages of two or three sentences (although a good topic sentence at the beginning of a paragraph can serve as a micro-agenda for the paragraph). It is, however, helpful for longer messages. Agendas work especially well for good-news and routine messages. Agendas also work well for oral communication situations, such as leaving voice messages, conducting interviews and meetings, and giving training and other types of presentations. The only exceptions might be for bad-news and heavily persuasive messages where writers might not want to forecast the structure or bottom line of the message—for example, the persuasive text you are reading right now!

Next time you have to create an oral or written message at work, try organizing it into an OABC pattern. I think you and your audience will quickly see the benefits.

-Bill Baker