Manage Your Writing

This week: Ask WIIFM?

Management consultant Bill Jensen wrote in his  book Simplicity, "About 80 percent of your internal communication—meetings, teleconferences, presentations, emails, etc.—consists of

• Sharing information that does not require action, and/or
• Communicating something for which there is no discernible consequence if the recipient ignores it

"In other words, a lot of communication you thought was helpful may be seen as unfocused noise or just 'FYI' junk mail by your teammates."

This week, while you plan each piece of writing, put yourself in your reader's place and ask "WIIFM?—What's In It For Me?" When you can answer that question for your reader, you'll write more effectively.

This week: Find the "we"

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management theory, wrote, "There can be no communication if it is conceived as going from the 'I' to the 'Thou.' Communication works only from one member of 'us' to another."

This week, as you begin each piece of writing, ask yourself, "To what community do my reader and I both belong?" If you can define this community at the very beginning of your writing process, all kinds of other decisions will fall into place for you.

Difficult pieces of writing will suddenly become easier if instead of focusing on the antagonisms or differences between you and your readers, you focus on the community you're both part of. Even if you're angry at your reader or have a complaint about your reader's performance, you'll find that you can frame your message in the context of what you both want to happen—larger market share, say, or a better work environment.

This week: Create Value by Organizing

In my "Welcome" message, in the left column of this blog, I use the term knowledge economy. I prefer that term to the terms information age and information economy because information by itself has no value. To be valuable, information must be organized and communicated and thus turned into knowledge. As knowledge management guru Thomas A. Stewart wrote, "intelligence becomes an asset when some useful order is created out of free-floating brainpower."

So this week, before you draft each piece of writing, ask yourself, "How can I best organize this information to turn it into knowledge for my reader?" By asking that question, and acting on your answer, you'll be creating value in a knowledge economy

This week: Respect your customer

Every reader is a customer: an actual external customer, an actual internal customer, or at least a customer of your writing.

This week, as you plan and revise each message, think about treating your reader/customer with the same respect you want when you are a customer. Make reading your message as easy and as stress-free as possible.

My friend Oliver E. Nelson, Jr., account exec at Energy Systems Group, taught me what I've begun to think of as "Nelson's Golden Rule": "Write unto others as you would have them write unto you."

This week: Start a "steal" file

This week, watch for a piece of writing that appeals to you, something that does its job especially well.

Then,

• make a copy of it
• highlight, or note in the margin, what makes it especially effective
• put it in a file folder labeled "steal"

The next time you're stuck planning or revising a piece of your own writing, grab your "steal" file—and be inspired!

This week: Try five W's and an H

This week, before you start drafting each writing job, list six questions on a piece of paper:

• Who?
• What?
• Where?
• When?
• Why?
• How?

Briefly answer each question, even if only in a word or two. You may find that after doing that,  you can draft faster and more effectively.

This week: Write for just one reader

I always recommend picturing your readers as completely as possible, using the "PACK" acronym: What's their personality? What's their attitude? What circumstances are they in? What's their knowledge of the subject? But what if you're writing to someone you don't know?

Daphne Gray-Grant, in her newsletter Power Writing, has a great solution: write for just one reader. She recommends identifying the characteristics of a "core reader," then giving him or her a specific identity. She writes,

The biggest benefit of creating imaginary people . . . is that you stop thinking about yourself. Instead of focusing on your own needs and problems, you're suddenly thinking about what the client or the reader cares about. And by giving your core reader a name and a face you transform him or her from an anonymous mass into a real human being.

This week, give Daphne's advice a try. When you're writing to a reader or readers you don't know personally, create a core reader, with his or her own name, personality, attitude, and circumstances.

This week: Persuade

Psychologist Robert B. Cialdina, after 30 years of research into what makes people comply with requests, identified six human tendencies that can lead to compliance:

1. Reciprocation. People more likely will give you something if they get something back.
2. Consistency. If people comply with one request, they more likely will comply with others.
3. Social validation. People more likely will comply if others are complying.
4. Liking. People more likely will comply with requests from people they like.
5. Authority. People more likely will comply with requests from people they see as being in authority.
6. Scarcity. People more likely will comply with requests when they see what they will receive as scarce.

This week, anytime you write to persuade someone to do something, check Cialdina's list. See if you can use one of his principles to improve your odds of getting things done.

This week: Write your way out of "voice mail hell"--and talk your way out of e-mail hell

At the blog Writing Matters, Leslie O'Flahavan shows us a great 61-word e-mail message she received from a client, a message that prevented a week of "voice mail hell."

This week, read Leslie's posting. Then during the week, look for ways you can use e-mail to reduce phone calls--and ways you can use phone calls to reduce e-mail. Each of these communication media has its own advantages. Learn to choose wisely.

This week: Give yourself a gift

Those of us celebrating important holidays the next couple of weeks are probably thinking about gifts. Gifts are wonderful--to give and to receive--but one kind of thinking about gifts may be getting in the way of becoming a more effective writer.

Many of us have learned to believe that the ability to write well is a gift. For some writers, it surely is: the great novelist, poet, or playwright is doubtless born as much as made. But the everyday writing that you and I do--the writing that gets the world's work done--requires no special gift. As researcher Frank Smith says, "it is a mistake to regard the thinking that underlies writing as something special, as a unique kind of activity that calls for unusual efforts and abilities."

This week, give yourself a gift: the gift of confidence that writing is a process that can be managed, like any other business process. Know that you're a gifted writer and that you can manage your writing.