I just wrapped up a big project (100 interviews), and it occurred to me that managers sometimes wonder what to expect in their final report.

If you get a report that begins by detailing all the project steps and how the consultant came to the findings, send it back for a rewrite.

You hire a market research consultant not only to compile data but to make sense of them. Whether analyzing census data or a communications audit, the final report should be accessible and relevant, and it should lead logically to recommendations for solving the problem that motivated you to commission market research.

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“Baby Boomers are the only ones thinking about the future. The older and younger groups are all stuck in the present.”

That is the conclusion reached by Judy Schriener, who is writing a book about housing design trends driven by the 76 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964

What do Boomers want? Everything, she says.

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Careful writers and editors take pains to avoid bias in language, but many style guides offer only general advice.

An exception is the Guidelines for Reporting and Writing about People with Disabilities, developed by the Research and Training Institute on Independent Living at the University of Kansas. Reflecting the input of more than 100 national disability organizations, the Guidelines provide an alphabetical list of appropriate terminology, unacceptable usage, and concise definitions of specific terms, as well as an informative section on “portrayal issues” that you should consider when writing about people with disabilities.

For example, the listing for “seizure” gives the preferred terms (e.g., “girl with epilepsy” or “man with seizure disorder”) as well as what to avoid; “Do not use fit, spastic or attacks.” It also explains succinctly what the term describes, what causes a seizure, and the difference between a contraction and a convulsion. Nuggets of information like these help the writer avoid not only unintentional bias but also sloppiness in meaning, and they enhance the credibility of the work overall.

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Not long ago—just barely before the millennium turned—four gents posted 95 theses they modestly styled “the end of business as usual.” Indeed, the Cluetrain Manifesto Web site and book describe a fundamental transformation in how organizations operate and people interact with them.

Though several Internet generations have passed since its birth, the Manifesto has inexplicably not been universally adopted. Some companies don’t think it applies to them, or their customers, or their industry.

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Or is it? From the World Wide Web’s early days, the first step in creating a Web presence has been setting goals. If you don’t know why you have a Web site, you can’t tell whether it’s a success, measure progress, or evaluate proposed or implemented changes.

Still, too many Web sites’ structures match their organizations’ internal—and irrelevant, to outsiders—topology rather than client’s or customer’s navigational instincts. And content sometimes reveals more about corporate politics or bigwigs than it does about people’s reasons for visiting a site.

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The first of Frank Kaiser’s Ten Commandments for Selling to Seniors reads:

Thou shalt never think that the elderly market is ‘old.’ We don’t consider ourselves old. Don’t you.

That message is doubly important when trying to reach aging baby boomers. The generation that once didn’t trust anyone over 30 won’t accept being labeled “elderly,” “senior,” or “old.” They’re too busy riding Harleys and taking up snowboarding.

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[W]hat animal psychologists call theory of mind is the ability to infer what another animal does or does not know. Baboons seem to have a very feeble theory of mind. When they cross from one island to another, ever fearful of crocodiles, the adults will often go first, leaving the juveniles fretting at the water’s edge. However much the young baboons call, their mothers never come back to help, as if unable to divine their children’s predicament.But people have a very strong ability to recognize the mental states of others, and this could have prompted a desire to communicate that drove the evolution of language. ‘If I know you don’t know something, I am highly motivated to communicate it,’ Dr. [Robert] Seyfarth said.

How can we use this tantalizing observation (reported in the New York Times) to communicate more successfully? In particular, how can we know if someone doesn’t know something? Partly, it depends on age.

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This article originally appeared in the Editorial Advantage newsletter.

A sizeable chunk of the writing done in Washington is intended to persuade. If your job is to win hearts and minds for a nonprofit organization or government agency, you can learn a lot from leading thinkers in business marketing. Their top priority is knowing customers better than they know themselves.

Yes, it’s basic. Yet, too often purveyors of ideas and their audiences see the world through completely different eyes. They might as well be on different planets.

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