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How to Create Effective Procedures

In order for procedures to be effective, users must read them. And in my experience, the vast majority of quality procedures and Work Instructions are both poorly written and boring. So how can you change that? By writing a procedure that engages the reader.

The "Tiger I" User Manual - 1943

Introduced in August 1942, the German “Tiger” Tank was the most expensive and most powerful tank in the world. And the German technical writers understood that coaxing the young men crewing the tanks to read the technical manual would a challenge. So what interests a twenty-something young male soldier? Young attractive women… and a few risqué jokes. Understanding their audience, the German technical writers turned their thick and boring tank manuals for “Tiger” & “Panther” tanks into a combination of “Popular Science”/“Playboy”/comic book. Download: Die Tigerfibel 1943, (The "Tiger" users manual - 1943

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These manuals proved to be so popular, that they were even translated into the Russian language and read throughout the Soviet Army tank corps!

Now if you think that this would never be acceptable in today's “politically correct” environment, you're missing the point… which is to find out what interests your audience and engage them.

US Army - "PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly"

Adopting the comic book-style art to illustrate proper preventive maintenance methods, the US Army began publishing the “PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly” as a series of technical bulletins in June 1951. The magazine's title derives from its being a “postscript” to technical manuals and other published maintenance guidance. While the magazine has changed over the decades, as of January 2020 it is now only distributed electronically.


The entire series has been converted to pdf and is available at: https://www.nsncenter.com/Library/PSMagazine and/or http://psmag.radionerds.com/index.php/Index_by_issue

The Manga Guide to...

Taking this comic book-style art approach into the non-military sector, “The Manga Guides” (マンガでわかる, Manga de wakaru) is a series of educational Japanese manga books. Each volume explains a particular subject in science or mathematics. The series is published in Japan by Ohmsha and in America by No Starch Press.[1][2] Different volumes are written by different authors.