The benefits and challenges of drafting by committee

I think it is no small secret that universities love a committee. Whether you call them committees, working groups, task forces, advisory groups, steering committees, or something else entirely, it would not surprise me to learn that your university has these in abundance. If there’s a problem, there’s probably a committee being formed to find the solution.

But I jest. Committees (advisory groups, task forces, etc.) are an integral component of collegial governance. And in many ways, there are indisputable benefits to having a cross-institutional committee weigh in on policy decisions that have broad campus impacts.

Benefits such as:

• Breadth of expertise: Universities are awash with subject matter experts and their expertise can help ground the policy in the context of the university’s campus culture and history.
• Cross-divisional representation: Including representation across different divisions of the university helps create well-rounded and inclusive policies and ensures relevant application in all areas.
• Proactive stakeholder consultation: Early input from relevant stakeholders can speed up the policy approval process by identifying and addressing issues right away.
• Improved uptake: When more people have been involved in the policy process it creates a sense of shared ownership which can lead to better buy-in and uptake during the operationalization of the policy.

However, the question at the heart of this blog post is: Is drafting by committee the most effective strategy for policy writing? And I’m not so sure that it is. While we want to ensure we are capitalizing on the wealth of expertise available on campus and gathering the relevant people in the room, we also run the risk of the proverbial “too many cooks in the kitchen.” And when we have too many cooks in the kitchen, we can end up with a policy that includes everything and the kitchen sink.

Drafting by committee can lose sight of the overall objective.

The challenge with drafting by committee is that we can quickly lose sight of the overall objective as everyone starts getting into the weeds about what the policy needs to say and how it needs to be said. People come to the table with their own personal objectives of what they believe the policy needs to cover, and if they successfully convince the rest of the committee to include each of those objectives or pieces of information, we can quickly end up with a policy draft that is unwieldy.

Drafting by committee can cause logistical challenges.

Challenges such as coordinating meetings, keeping people on task, waiting for each committee member to weigh in on decisions, coming to consensus with there are differing opinions and perspectives, time spent wordsmithing the language so that we can land on a message that's not only precisely accurate, but accurately precise while also artfully exact, with every word pulling its semantic weight. Or at least that’s what the linguists in the room tell me.

So how and when can we use committees in our policy process?

My personal preference is to capitalize on existing committees as part of an early consultation process. As we covered at the start of this blog, it is highly likely that you already have a plethora of committees at your disposal. There is likely one, if not two or three or four, committees scattered across campus that include relevant subject matter expertise and cross-institutional representation that you could utilize to help inform the policy without actually asking them to write it. Why ask people to form and join yet another committee when you can simply go to them? Instead, consider:

• Take the existing policy (or the plan for a new policy) to the committee and ask the committee members to identify their top one to two pain points with the policy.
• Take that information away, and use it to help inform the new draft.
• Bring the new draft back to the committee for feedback.

The key to this process is to let the committee know they are not “the owners” of the policy, you are there seeking their feedback and expertise, but that ultimately the policy drafter is making the final decision on the scope, content and language of the policy.

This process can be repeated with however many relevant committees or groups exist on campus relative to the topic of the policy being drafted or revised. Utilizing existing committees in this way helps reap the benefits, while sidestepping the challenges.

Whether you always write policy by committee, never write policy by committee or occasionally find yourself writing policy by committee, this blog post has hopefully sparked some reflection on the value and pitfalls of drafting by committee.

Part 3: Automating Accessibility in Custom Word Templates

Note: This post is a beginner-intermediate tutorial and assumes you already know how to save and edit a document in Word for use as a custom template file (.dotx). For a beginner’s guide to saving a document as a template see Microsoft’s “Create a Template” tutorial. Additionally, this post is tailored specifically for PCs with Office 365, though most should be applicable for MAC use, as well as older versions of Word.

One of the challenges of producing accessible policy documents for digital use is ensuring the continual consistency and uniformity of those documents throughout the many stages of policy. In a previous post, I discussed how the tedious and ongoing repair and upkeep of our templates, as they passed through the hands and computers of different policy writers, was costing our office a lot of valuable time. In this post, I’m going to show you some of the ways we’ve been able to harness some of Word’s advanced templating features to mitigate user error, automate institutional and accessibility standards, and save our office a lot time by eliminating the same repetitive fixes.

Create Uniform Styles

Creating styles is the easiest way to save time and energy for both you and your users. Any time text or formatting is modified from the standard paragraph text (even just bolded or resized), it should be assigned to an existing style or a new one created. The biggest mistake Word users make is formatting text outside of a style. This is important for both accessibility and elimination of user error. Every time text is formatted outside of a named style, those alterations are coded into the text, making it more difficult to convert to other formats (PDF, HTML, etc.), while also making it a nightmare for screen readers.

Most Microsoft Word users know that Word comes preloaded with their own styles, and if you’ve been following along with my posts on accessibility, you know that using them is a requirement for the creation of accessible documents. However, most casual users are not aware that these styles can be modified and used to act and look however you want them to. In addition, when you create a template (.dotx or .dotm) from a Word document, if done correctly, those styles will appear within the template for use by anyone with the template file.

Whether you’re modifying a current template file or creating a new one, you can alter the styles to meet your aesthetic needs while adhering to accessibility best practices (just be sure your custom styles meet WCAG’s standards on font, size, contrast, and color).

Updating Styles

If your template is already created, you can use the pre-existing text to quickly update Microsoft’s pre-programmed styles to mimic your template’s design. If you’re creating a new template, simply format the text exactly how you want the headings and other elements in your template to look. Then determine the hierarchy of formatted text in your template, keeping in mind that anything formatted differently than paragraph text should be assigned a style. (Remember to assign headings based on WCAG’s standards, and never, ever, skip levels).

To assign a text’s properties to a style, click on any part of that text and then right-click the applicable style in the styles ribbon. Select “Update Heading to Match Selection” from the pop-up menu (see image below). Doing this tells Words to copy all the properties of the selected text (font name, size, boldness; bolding or italics; paragraph spacing, indenting, alignment; formatting; etc.) to the style. Now, rather than a screen reader reading aloud those properties in lengthy detail, it will simply announce it by its selected header tag, which also notifies the reader of its importance within the document.

Follow this step for all your headings and any other formatted elements, and don’t forget to modify the paragraph style to match your template’s paragraph style if it deviates from Microsoft’s default programming.

Note: In Office 365, only heading 1 and 2 are shown by default; however, when you assign text to heading 2, heading 3 is revealed, and so on as each heading is assigned.

Altering Style Settings

If you follow the instructions above, you should be able to easily make and use styles within your current document. However, if you want your styles to persist and be accessible within the template file itself on any computer by anyone with the template file, you need to take one more step.

With each style you modify, right click on its name in the styles ribbon and select “Modify.”

In this menu, you are able to alter any of the properties of the style, including its name, paragraph options, effects, bordering, etc. But the most important setting for templating is to ensure that both “Add to the Styles gallery” and “New documents based on this template” are checked (as shown below).

Don’t forget to save your document as a template file afterward.

Any time a document is created from that template file, it will contain its assigned and customized styles, eliminating the need for tedious and repetitive formatting, and reducing user error from manual formatting. However, to really restrict users from inadvertently muddying your template, you’re going to want to lock down the styles they’re allowed to use, freeing them from the pesky confusion of choice and giving you supreme template control, which I will discuss in a future post.

More Information

This post is part of an ongoing series on web accessibility and Microsoft Word optimization. For further training, see my previous posts (Word Tips one and two, and part one and part two of my series on accessibility.) 

I hope you are finding these posts informative and applicable with your role in policy administration. As usual, let me know in the comments below what questions you may have, topics you would like to see addressed in future posts, challenges you face in regards to document or template creation, or any other suggestions you have to help me tailor my posts to your unique needs. 

Using Technology and Automation to Augment Your Policy Process

When I was an editing student in college, an older professor asked me to proofread a nonfiction book he had authored and get it ready for publication. He emailed me his files and a letter from his publisher that outlined their style guide, and mentioned that the publisher had rejected the files in their current state because of “formatting incompatibilities.” I didn’t know just what they meant until I attempted to format the document myself and noticed a host of bizarre issues: certain passages were locked, fonts and margins were inconsistent from page to page, and some paragraphs had collapsed entirely upon themselves into a single jumbled line of incomprehensible text. The most frustrating part was the more I attempted to fix the formatting through the normal Word interface, the more issues and problems it would introduce.  

So how does this apply to what we do in policy and the vastly unique roles of our individual policy offices? Little did I know (but would quickly learn), that underneath the text we see on a digital screen is an extensive web of coded language that instructs the program how to respond to a user’s inputted action (keystroke, voice, touch, etc.). This code can act in unwanted ways when a user inadvertently introduces invisible instructions to the program (usually through formatting marks, bookmarks, styles, etc.). In the case of my professor, he had unknowingly used some formatting options that had left invisible, residual coded marks after the original text was deleted in earlier drafts. By exposing these marks through advanced formatting options in Word and then eliminating them through the outline view, I was able to fix the coding issues. This was the moment I learned that Word is so much more than a word processor; that it, and other Microsoft Office products (Excel, Publisher, OneNote, OneDrive, etc.), contain a pre-coded network of untapped potential for application, productivity, and automation solutions that most casual users never know is even there. And with a little instruction, these and other programs that we already use can be customized and applied in individualized ways to solve the unique demands of our offices.

For example, my position in my university’s Policy Office involves editing policy drafts and completing research for policy writers. These writers, while incredibly intelligent subject-matter experts in their field, come with varying levels of technological proficiency. When I first started, I would email out our university’s template files for policy drafts, summaries, comments, etc. to writers, and what I would get back would sometimes be barely recognizable as our own template. A lot of my time was spent fixing accidental formatting errors caused by inexperienced users, multiple authors/drafts, or general human error: fixing fonts, sizes, and margins; moving stray lines and logos back where they belong; and just generally enforcing our university’s style guide (e.g., fixing section numbers, alphabetizing). All manual, repetitive, and tedious—but necessary—tasks.

Through a little Googling and dabbling in some of the advanced capabilities and developer options of Word (VBA), I was able to create a template that does not allow a writer to do anything I don’t want them to and automates the stuff I don’t want to do. The design is locked down. The styles, locked. The numbering and alphabetizing is all automated and customized to our style guide. They cannot misnumber a section; my template won’t let them. They cannot move, alter, erase, or change anything other than the sections they need to. And that was just template version 1. Using that template, I am currently creating a custom UserForm app (all through Microsoft Word using its existing features as intended) that will automate all the templates that we use in our office. Upon completion, a writer will be able to simply fill in the UserForm fields and submit, and the template will be generated and auto-populate with their answers.

The above is just one example out of the countless customizable solutions that anyone can create with just a little advanced insight and know-how. By understanding and harnessing the full capabilities of these programs, advanced users easily automate repetitive tasks, eliminate user error, increase efficiency and productivity, seamlessly enforce institutional standards and styles, and create better, cleaner documents and spreadsheets that enhance their policy and research processes.

The purpose of this post then is to gauge interest for a reoccurring segment on the Policy Matters blog (alongside its other fabulous editorial content) that that will educate interested ACUPA members on different ways they can optimize their own policy process by creating simple solutions customized to the unique needs of their office. This segment would consist of short, beginner-friendly tricks and tips for utilizing the popular office programs that we already own and use to their full potential, tailored to a policy administration environment.

Now, I’d like to hear from you. Do you think this information might be helpful or applicable in you and your office’s functions and roles? What unique administrative challenges do you face that you would like to find solutions for (anything, seriously!). Is there anything else in particular you would like this segment to cover?