Quotes on the approval process

What writers and others say

“It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.”

— Anonymous

“The review process was worse than a triple root canal followed by a colonoscopy. Reminds me of an ad where the cola can starts out red, works its way through the spectrum, then back to red.”

— Roy Berces, group communication manager at Mervyn’s LLC

“drag factor: A person, issue, process, etc., which delays a key decision.”

— BuzzWhack

“DBT, or Death by Tweakage: When a brochure or newsletter fails due to unnecessary tinkering or too many last-minute revisions.”

— BuzzWhack

“Nanomanagers: Bosses who have taken micromanaging to a whole new level of nitpicking.”

— BuzzWhack

“Blanding: Branding schemes that strip the uniqueness from a corporate identity so it will appeal to a broad audience. The result: a bland brand.”

— BuzzWhack

“Legal scrub: To run your copy past the corporate lawyers so they can strip everything interesting out of it.”

— BuzzWhack

“reverbiagized: To reword a concept or proposal with the hope of changing the minds of the people who didn’t like it the first time around. ‘It’s the same ad campaign, but we reverbiagized it.’”

— BuzzWhack

“Sign on a newspaper reporter’s desk: ‘The strongest desire is neither love nor hate. It is one person’s need to change another person’s copy.’”

— Gilbert Cranberg, former editor of The Des Moines (Iowa) Register’s editorial pages

“ACCOUNTANT: ‘Can I check over that story before you run it?’ EDITOR: ‘Sure. As long as I can balance the books this month.’”

— Steve Crescenzo, owner of Crescenzo Communications

“Starting with your thumb, count how many people need to approve your copy before it goes to press. If you need more than one hand, you need to make some changes. I know a lot of editors who have inherited approval processes that look like conga lines at an Irish wedding — and just assume that’s how it has to be. It doesn’t.”

— Steve Crescenzo, owner of Crescenzo Communications

“What I have crossed out I didn’t like. What I haven’t crossed out I am dissatisfied with.”

— Cecil B. DeMille, American movie producer

“Creativity varies inversely with the number of cooks involved in the broth.”

— Bernice Fitz-Gibbon, retail pioneer

“1. Fire the committee. No great website in history has been conceived of by more than three people. Not one. This is a dealbreaker.”

— Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow

The hardest part of communicating is “the grinding, gut-wrenching, soul-sapping approval process required to get a company to say anything at all.”

— David Murray, editor, writer and journalist

“In the good old days, we remember sentimentally, corporate editors were a little more daring and a lot more contrary. They talked less about ‘learning to speak management’s language’ and more about how to cut more gutless bureaucrats out of the approval process.”

— Ragan Report, June 19, 2000

“Remember: You are being asked to approve it, not to improve it.”

— Ron Shewchuk, ABC, author, from his approval process note, in Writing and Editing the Employee Publication

“The tragic flaw of some editors is their inability or unwillingness to make crucial judgment calls with respect to what changes to accept and which to reject. Don’t ever lose sight of your power as an editor and your responsibility to the needs of your readers.”

— Ron Shewchuk, ABC, author, Writing and Editing the Internal Publication

“Death by redlining. I hate redlined documents. It’s like a theatre director giving line readings to an actor rather than helping them explore the character and give a stronger performance. (Line readings = ‘when you say this line, raise your right eyebrow.’ Yuck!)”

— Matthew Stibbe, writer-in-chief for Articulate Marketing

“I used to joke that, when it was time to write a State of the Union address, they would give me a round keyboard so everyone at the table could type.”

— Michael Waldman, former Clinton speechwriter

“‘Niggle’ is [Procter & Gamble’s] verb for editing a memo. Memos could go through a dozen or more ‘niggles,’ before they made their way up P&G’s hierarchy, ‘through the layers of wisdom’ …”

— The Wall Street Journal

“The enemy of speed is the labyrinthine, everyone-in-the-building-has-to-see-it, gloppety-gloppety machine that leaves red ink spilled all over your copy.”

— Art Weise, vice president of Corporate Communications, Entergy Corp.

“All that wasted motion of everybody putting in commas and taking out commas wasn’t necessary.”

— Art Weise, vice president of Corporate Communications, Entergy Corp., after reengineering the company’s approval process

“No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.”

— H.G. Wells, English author and historian

“Most of the questions I get during workshops center not on, ‘How do I write it like that?’ but on ‘How do I get the yahoos to let me write it like that?’”

— Ann Wylie, writing expert

“You don’t win the approval process war comma by comma. If you’re pleading for authority, piece by piece, to choose whether ‘that’ or ‘which’ is the right word to use in the fourth paragraph, you’ve already lost.”

— Ann Wylie, writing expert

“Timid communicators rewrite lots of copy.”

— Ann Wylie, writing expert

“Communication is selling. If you’re a poor salesperson, you’re a poor communicator.”

— Ann Wylie, writing coach

“Lesson No. 1 for the bosses: The approval system stinks.”

— Jim Ylisela Jr., editor, Corporate Writer & Editor

“No wonder much of this stuff reads like it was written by a committee. In most cases, it was.”

— Jim Ylisela Jr., editor, Corporate Writer & Editor