How to Avoid the Dreaded Reviewer's Remorse

That Solo Life, Episode 249

Michelle Kane [00:18]: Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros, marketers, and communicators who work for themselves. People like me, Michelle Kane with Voice Matters, and my ever-wonderful co-host, Karen Swim, who leads us all at Solo PR Pro. Hi, Karen. How's it going today?

Karen Swim, APR [00:37]: Hi, Michelle, it's going great. How are things going for you?

Michelle Kane [00:40]: It's going along, you know, people are waking up, the weather's warm. Things are rocking and rolling, you know, guiding clients through things.

Karen Swim, APR [00:51]: Guiding clients through the things, all the things, yeah. It does seem like things have really started popping. They have, which is good. With the change of the seasons, everybody woke up.

Michelle Kane: [1:02]: Yeah, yeah, right? They all came out of their hibernation, my goodness. But what we want to talk about today, speaking of guiding clients through all the things, is something we like to call reviewers' remorse. You know how it goes. If it's a website, a press release, a statement, you think you've gotten it to the finish line. All the eyes have been on it. Everyone's read it. Everyone's gone through it. You have the trail of emails saying approved, approved, approved. And then just as you're about to hit send or launch. Oh, wait, wait. Oh, gee, I don't know. Yeah. Have we all been there? We have from time to time.

Karen Swim, APR [1:45]: We've all been there. Either someone new gets invited to the party, like, oh, wait, John, who's John? And why do they get to have an opinion about this? This has been approved by everyone, like too many people. So I hate that part of the process, by the way, as I know, we all do. I, I always try to streamline early on and ask, you know, establish the review chain, like, Okay, who is the approver? Like, one person? I don't care if you guys pass it around to 22 people internally, but I'm not looking at 22 people's comments. I'm just not.

Michelle Kane [02:26]: Talk amongst yourselves and figure it out and then get back to me, right? 100%. But yeah, it's true. And I was a little snarky there, but sometimes you do think, it's like, well, I'm sorry, who are you? And who says you get to chime in on this? But it does happen. And, you know, it's one of the many peculiarities that we navigate.
I think a lot of the time we serve as a de facto therapist for organizations. And, you know, oftentimes I've found that sometimes going through this process and then ending up with one of those reviewers remorse situations happening, there are times when it really helps get to the actual crux of the issue. It really helps almost reframe it in a way that, you know, I've often sat back and thought, Oh, okay, well, maybe whatever this is, should be taking a different direction after all, which is fine.

But you know, what we want to really talk about today is how can we be the best guide we can be? Just, you know, because it's not that we want to rush things through, but we are about being, we want to be efficient with time, efficient with resources. And those resources include, you know, all the people that have to weigh in, the time they have to devote to looking at things and, you know, keeping in mind what is the purpose of whatever is being reviewed. Sometimes that's not communicated clearly. And that could lead to this happening too.

Karen Swim, APR [04:09]: Yeah, you're always going to, it shouldn't happen consistently. You shouldn't always have this happening with every client or every project. But every once in a while, you're going to have that person that is just going to throw the whole process into a hitch. But thankfully, there are some things that we can do to minimize this occurrence.

One of the things that I started to do, because this did happen, is I create a document workflow process, so that they know, and it's for different situations. And we go over that during onboarding, we go over it again, they have it with them.

And then every time we send something, we remind them, like, OK, here's the process, right, which helps to remind them that you don't need to have 50 people review a press release or a bylined article. Here are the reviewers, and then here's the process for that, and here's what we'll do. And then when it's final, you know, going back one more time, building enough time into the process, even after it's final and saying, last call for any changes, please review this one more time. That way, if there's something that they missed in the final, now you have the final final, and then you remind them, okay, this has been approved in its final. So we are now going to send this to the editor or publish it to the side or, you know, queue it up on the wire service.

So it really means breaking down the steps for them, setting the tone. And then the other thing that my review document clarifies is what they're reviewing for. I remind them, because otherwise you get people that have a particular feeling about a word. And it's not that the word is off-brand or doesn't align with their style guide. It's just a personal thing. So you really have to tell people, we need you to review for accuracy. If there's something that's incorrect, please correct it.

But what they shouldn't be doing is, well, I would have said this differently. And a lot of times that happens when that person is not the author of the piece. like, OK, well, we don't really care. And there are just some things that don't matter. So you want to make the process efficient for them. And you want to explain that to them.

And you want to make sure that you give enough time for discussion and disagreement before the final hour so that you can help to reassure them so that, as Michelle said, you can surface any underlying issues that they may have or any hesitations they may have about what they're putting out. You can work through those things and not get down to the 11th hour where they're making your life crazy.

Michelle Kane [07:04]: Right, right. I mean, certainly there is a level of hashing things out. I mean, my goodness, recently I had an instance where it was clearly a list of three concepts, and one of the feedback items was, this is incorrect. These are two things, and I'm sitting there looking at them. and I said, I'm sorry, but I see three things. Then I sat with it for a minute and I said, unless you intend that items one and two are one concept, which will require a word change, conjunction, junction, what's your function? Then it's two. I said, I can make it two.

But that clarity of thought is not always present at the outset. So really having that ability to have that relationship to say, okay, well, I see what's on the screen here. What are you really trying to communicate? Because clearly I'm missing it. Because, you know, we do this every day. We know our stuff. So something's missing. So if there's something missing, dig for it. And you'll find it, which was awesome. It ended well. We found the reason for the feedback. And then I was like, oh, okay, well, that's easy.

Karen Swim, APR [08:22]: Yeah, we do have to do a fair amount of digging sometimes to get to the core issues. And that, again, in your process, you want to make time for that. Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it takes a little bit more work. And sometimes when you're dealing with things that may be sensitive to the organization. So maybe it's data, or maybe it's a case study, or maybe it's addressing an issue that's a little bit sensitive. you're going to have to allow more time just to make sure, again, that the rug doesn't get pulled from under you because they're now overthinking it. And I think I remind myself that people don't pay attention in the way that we used to, all of us, every single one of us. And so for them, we have to allow a little bit of grace and compassion and understanding that while they reviewed it, Then they kind of realized that they didn't really review it. You know, they, they said yes, but then they thought about it. Yeah. And so true. It's like, Oh, wait a minute. Wait, I didn't see that before. And so they have questions and so remain calm. But again, before you start the train going down the track, because some things are hard to pull back, depending on, for example, the wire service you use, you can't always just pull that thing, um, minutes before it happens. And so. you need to make that very clear to the client and force them to pay attention and to really give it the time that it deserves to make sure that their answer really is their answer and that they're comfortable enough to trust you.

And this is huge, too, I think, is establishing trust so that they know that you have their best interests at heart, that you're not going to put out anything that's inaccurate or that reflects poorly on the organization. So even if They were sort of half in it because they were busy and doing 2,000 things at once and they just didn't focus in on it That you have their back because that's our job. We're not gonna make our clients look bad, right?

Michelle Kane [10:27]: Right. I mean that's that's the last thing we want to do and I you know, what one thing that this doesn't necessarily apply to because I I am the biggest person that does this. If you're writing copy, let's say for a printed piece or a brochure or something, sometimes when you see the copy that you typed out in place, you realize, oh, that doesn't fit so well. It's that kind of process. We're not really talking about unless, of course, ready to go to the printer, then no. But, you know, a lot of times it's like to me it's like moving furniture. I'm like, oh, that's so if it doesn't look good.

Karen Swim, APR [11:02]: Yes. No, you're absolutely right. If it's going to be a printed piece, you have to don't send it to the printer before another review of it printed out and what it's going to look like because you're absolutely that happens to me every single time with a design piece like that doesn't look right now like the message was great it it's not that there's anything grammatically wrong with it or off-brand it just It has to work within design. That's a great point, Michelle.

Michelle Kane [11:29]: Yeah, I mean, that's that's just part of the process there. So yeah, but yeah, I mean, this is definitely more of a from who's reviewing it. What is the end game? You know, what is the point of whatever it is we're working on? And, you know, just making sure that everything is in alignment. And so that there aren't any surprises when we're about to hit set. Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR [11:52]: And I can't say enough, or as much as possible, I do understand that in certain, certain organizational situations, you may have a few reviewers, you may have to have legal, you may have to have a few different departments. But as much as possible, or always, I should say, always limit the number of reviewers to only what is absolutely essential. So yes, you may need to have legal, but do you need to have three attorneys? No. You may need to have someone from the executive suite, but does it have to be every executive?

You have to teach them to trust one another as well and to delegate and to understand that everyone's working for the same thing. And if you're going to review on top of people, it says that you don't believe that they're competent enough to make the right decision. So choose people that you believe are competent and allow them to do their job and limit it.

Because the more people that you have, the more errors that occur. Oh, yeah, and you have people on top of one another sometimes disagreeing on things So someone will rewrite something and then you'll say okay that that's fine This this change looks good. And then someone else will come in and say oh wait, that's no we should do this and then it's like well You the brand told us to do this and now you're saying don't do that. So you all need to be aligned Yeah, talk amongst yourselves.

Michelle Kane [13:18]: Yes Yeah, it's almost as you're saying that I almost feel like in the best way that we can and sometimes it may not feel natural to say this, but just say, you know, could each entity within the brand pick a spokesperson for your department, right? Sort it out within. Yes. Decide what your idea is going to be and then bring it to us that that definitely helps to streamline feedback and input too. Yes, 100%. Yeah. Well, hey, we hope this has been helpful for you.

We hope you've gotten to giggle along with us a little bit and think of all those scenarios that have happened to you and your work because we know they are there. But if you found this of value, please do share it around. If you have any feedback, please, we want to hear from you. Who's out there? Hit us up at soloprpro.com. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.