Manage Your Writing

Good writing creates more tactical options

Ray, at The (New) Legal Writer, has posted a great quotation, from Kenneth F. Oettle:

Good writing ... is a useful tool. Or to use a metaphor more in keeping with the litigator’s image, it is a useful weapon. The more powerful the weapon, the more formidable the advocate who commands it. A litigation team with a good writer has more tactical options because maneuvers that depend on clear, forceful writing have a greater chance of success....

Delete the word litigation in that last sentence, and you have advice that applies to all of us.

Sweating the details

At his blog Academic VC, former venture capitalist Stephen Fleming writes on the importance of good writing and editing of business plans:

When you're sending out a business plan for investment, you're supposed to be putting your best foot forward. Remember when your mother said "You only get one chance to make a first impression"? She was right. If my first impression of you is a document with errors in it, that colors my opinion of you and your company. If you're not going to sweat the details here, what are you going to do when negotiating a sales contract, or an employment agreement, or preparing a presentation for a key client?

(Thanks to Planning, Startups, Stories for the link.)

The ($6 million) cost of bad writing

Bad writing has recently cost a lawyer--and her firm--more than $6.6 million dollars. A Philadelphia court has ruled that a lease agreement drafted by the lawyer was so "inartfully written" and "confusing" that it constituted malpractice. (I can almost hear physicians cheering.)

The complete story is at Law.com. (Thanks to Adam Freedman, at The Party of the First Part, for the link.)

E-mail and the market

I've just read an article I clipped from the December 2004 issue of Training+Development. A sidebar, "Writing and the Bottom Line," reports:

A CEO who thought he saw too few parked cars early in the day blasted an angry email to 400 managers. He complained that employees weren't working enough hours.

An employee forwarded the CEO's threatening email outside the company, and it was posted on Yahoo.com.

Stock market analysts and investors found out and were concerned that negative events at the company were behind such an angry message from the CEO.

The New York Times picked up the story.

The company's stock price fell 22 percent, from US$44 to $34, in just three days (53).

You've doubtless heard of the "butterfly effect": the fact that a tiny action can have huge consequences. The CEO needed to manage his writing. A few minutes spent in defining his audience at the planning stage, or looking at his draft objectively at the revising stage, could have prevented a catastrophe.

Clear writing pays

The U.S. government's Plain Language site has listed some bottom-line effects of simple, clear communication. Here's just one example:

The first plain language regulation was a FCC regulation on operating ham radios. Before FCC  issued the regulation, there were five staff members answering public calls and letters with questions about the FCC's requirements for operating ham radios. Several months after FCC issued the regulation, the questions had fallen off so far that all five staff members were moved to other jobs.

(Thanks to Kim Campbell at the University of Alabama for the link.)

Working smarter

Anne M. Enquist, at Seattle University's School of Law, has completed a study of "the secrets of highly successful legal writing students." Her abstract is packed with good advice for us business writers as well:

Why are some law students successful in their legal writing classes and others are not? To identify the secrets to success, I did a case study of six second-year law students as they wrote a motion brief and an appellate brief for their 2L legal writing course. Based on their 1L legal writing course, two of these students were predicted to be highly successful, two were predicted to be moderately successfully, and two were predicted to be only marginally successful. Through daily records of all their activities related to writing the briefs, interviews with the study subjects, drafts of their two brief projects, and their professor's critiques of their work, the study reveals not only the results of working harder but the specifics of working smarter. The secrets to working smarter included note-taking and note-reviewing strategies; how to divide one's time between researching, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading; how to research and read cases efficiently; strategies for efficient time management; techniques for organizing one's research and staying organized while writing; and accessing the professor as a primary resource. Pitfalls to avoid included procrastination, poor management of distractions, and scapegoating.

(Thanks to Raymond P. Ward,  at New Legal Writer, for the link.)

In the IT industry, writing skills matter

Eddie Geller, CEO of the Unique World Group, an Australia-based consulting and software company, writes that "soft" skills—including business writing—"make all the difference." He continues:

I wanted to comment on just how important soft skills are in the IT industry (or any industry for that matter). Many organisations have great technical people that really have a detailed understanding of their technical competency but many lack the skills in the simple areas. Areas such as presentation, business writing, customer expectation on site and just simple communication.

The people in these organisations are the faces that represent the business when they are on site and dealing directly with customers. Their ability to engage on both a technology and business front is paramount when dealing with customers.

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.

Win customers with writing

At her Business Writing blog, Lynn Gaertner-Johnston reports being given by Enterprise Rent-A-Car an extraordinarily effective piece of writing: a set of unusually clear directions on leaving the O'Hare lot and getting to any of eleven popular destinations. She continues:

The title of this post is "Win Customers With Writing." I chose it because Enterprise won me over with its written directions. More than that, a couple riding in the Enterprise airport shuttle (on my way home on Tuesday) told me that they too had liked the directions and would use Enterprise again.

Now it is your turn: Find inspiration in this Enterprise story. Think of something you can write that will win over your customers and clients. Then write it. It may make all the difference in someone's travels or in the future of your business.

Make your brand stand for good writing

At King Marketing, creative director AJ Kandy offers a radical idea: "Make good writing a cornerstone of your brand."

Better still, he offers the best two-minute demonstration of planning and drafting good marketing copy that I've ever seen. Thanks, AJ!

Correction: AJ's name is Kandy, not Candy. My apologies.