How To Keep Track Of Everyone’s Input

Contributed by Elaine Landau

As with anyone who has ever written anything, I expect people to offer opinions about my work. Whether I ask for it, or not. For some reason, people have a need to tell you what they think. It must come from the innate fear of being left out or ignored. Think about it, if a manager does not make some suggestions on a subordinate’s work, then maybe the manager is an unneeded employee. Hmmmmm. That must be why most managers use big red pens for their comments. Even if they write Good across the top of the page, it still makes the old heart skip a beat when you see that much red ink on a piece of paper.

Work pals also always seem to have a suggestion here and an idea there. They feel the changes would improve the work and help you look good to the boss. In fact, with so many opinions, you might forget what the document was about in the first place.

Opinions are like noses. Everybody has one. But, as with noses, must we share what comes out? Well, with that yucky visual, let’s move on to a high-tech solution to the problem of sorting through too many opinions.

Computers to the rescue.

Is there a computer program out there that can help untangle a web of opinions? If you have basic computer education, you may wish to learn how to use Microsoft® Word. That company has developed a nice feature called “Tracking”. If you have taken an advanced Word tutorial, you may have used it already to edit documents. The feature allows you to edit a document by hand, crossing out words and inserting phrases, while the original document stays intact and is still visible. Corel® WordPerfect® Help may be able to aid you further in understanding this feature, but it is a rather straightforward tool.

Using Word, go to Tools to see your changes and edits. Red lines appear through words or phrases you deleted. Words or phrases inserted are shown in green. If you want to invite input from others in your office, you may want to place the document in a place that is accessible to everyone. Opening your work up for global input may be inviting too many opinions. However, by inviting input you are taking the wind out of the sails of anyone who wants to take pot shots at your work later. Any and all are invited to put in their two cents. Just keep some common sense and retain a clean copy in case one of your opinionated coworkers accidentally deletes the document.

If you are curious who made what changes, you simply place your mouse point over a change and it tells you who was the editor. That ensures open communication. If you have a question about the input, you can call the person directly to discuss it.

If you are the final editor and are ultimately responsible for the content of the document, you are able to take all the input at one time, review it, and with a few simple clicks of the mouse, accept or reject any suggestion. If you want to be totally political and not offend one of your critics, you may ACCEPT ALL. If you feel particularly independent and contrary, you may REJECT ALL.

Talk about a time-saver. No more group meetings in which suggestions are yelled over one another and your document suffers from committee editing. It may remind you of the old joke—What do you call a horse made by a committee? A camel.

No more making multiple hard copies, distributing them and waiting for written feedback by a certain deadline. Somebody always seems to miss the deadline. Another person never seems to get the document in the first place. Then there is the worker who makes absolutely no changes so you know they never even read it.

It boils down to this: do you really want everybody to have a say in your project? If the answer is yes, using tools such as the one described here will save you time and effort.

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