Most of the measures of speeches or the meetings in which they are presented focus on audience satisfaction with various elements of the event: the length of the speech, the presenter’s delivery, the amount of Q&A, the temperature of the room. While it’s nice to have a happy audience, it’s more useful to know if the speech made an impact on the audience.
Quantification
But I hate numbers!
It’s ironic. Many of us have chosen communication as our life’s work because we don’t like numbers and math. But now, our bosses seem to expect us to quantify the value of what we’re doing for our organizations. Put numbers on persuasive prose? On creative layouts? On killer Web sites?
Quantifying the impact of communication “noise”
The overwhelming amount of communication employees receive, if not managed well, creates “noise” and can be very expensive in terms of wasted employee time.