Smart Skills: Business Writing

Patrick Forsyth

• Publisher: Legend Business
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787198210
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

Book 3 of the Smart Skills series: practical guides to mastering vital business skills and techniques. Using proven strategies from business experts, these essential smart skills can empower anyone with the tools to get ahead.

Gain a competitive edge at work with your business writing skills.

Effective business writing skills can help you win that million-pound contract, earn a promotion, resolve a dispute or generate a significant increase in business leads. Our Smart Skills book offers proven, practical advice on how to put over a clear and impressive message in a style that's deceptively simple and even enjoyable to read. These guidelines will teach you how to:

• Write and format business reports, proposals or presentations
• Recognise the dangers of poor writing
• Write effectively under time pressure
• Use persuasive techniques and structures
• Deal with all types of documentation from a "simple" email to a long report

Accessibly written, it includes checklists, templates and exercises to help you work through even the most basic building blocks of good writing. Business Writing provides an antidote to the dangers of 'gobbledegook' and 'business-speak' and allows you to generate any kind of document with confidence. After reading this guide, your writing will be effective, engaging and memorable- a vital skill for all professionals.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: GOOD WRITING IS THE BUSINESS EQUIVALENT OF AN OPEN GOAL

Life in an organisation can be busy and writing anything can seem a chore. There are surely more important things to be done – people to meet, decisions to be made, action to be taken. Yet all of these things and more can be dependent on written communication. A letter or memo may set up a meeting, a report may present a case and prompt a decision, and a proposal may act persuasively to make sure certain action is taken or a particular option is selected.

But reading business papers can be a chore also, and they will not achieve their purpose unless they are read, understood and do their job well enough to actively prompt the reader to action. The first rule is to accept that: Business writing must earn a reading.

THE NATURE OF WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

You are probably both a reader and a writer of business documents. Consider the nature of the written word with your reader’s hat on for a moment. Do you read everything that crosses your desk? Do you read every word of the things you do read? Do you read everything from the first word through in sequence, or do you dip into things? Almost certainly the answers make it clear that you do not treat all written material equally. Some documents are more likely to be read than others. Of course, some subjects demand your attention. Who ignores a personal note from the Managing Director? But the fact that some things have to be read often does not make their reading any easier or more pleasurable.

Good writing, which means, not least, something that is easy to read and understand, will always be likely to get more attention than sloppy writing. Yet we all know that prevailing standards in this area are by no means universally good.

Why is this? Maybe it is education; or lack of it. Often school (and sometimes even university) assists little with the kind of writing we find ourselves having to do once we work in an organisation. Maybe it is lack of feedback; perhaps managers are too tolerant of what is put in front of them. If more poor writing was rejected, and had to be rewritten, then more attention might be brought to bear on the task.

Habits are important here too. We all develop a style of writing and may find it difficult to shift away from it. Worse, bad habits may be reinforced by practice. For example, word-processing means that the ubiquitous standard document can often be used year after year with no one prepared to say: Scrap it even if they notice how inadequate it is.

FIRM FOUNDATIONS

Errors are easy to find. For example at a railway station: Passengers must not leave their luggage unattended at any time or they will be taken away and destroyed. We can learn more from the approach taken to writing, than from the one odd phrase. So at this stage, let’s analyse writing through an example, and review a typical business letter. Many of us have probably received something like this, usually addressed by name and slipped under the door to greet us as we rise on the last day of a stay in a hotel. The example that follows is a real one, though the originator’s name (a Singapore hotel) has been removed.

EXAMPLE 1

Dear Guest

We would like to thank you for allowing us to serve you here at the XXXX Hotel and hope that you are enjoying your stay.

Our records show that you are scheduled to depart today, and we wish to point out that our check-out time is 12 noon. Should you be departing on a later flight, please contact our front desk associates who will be happy to assist you with a late check-out. Also, please let us know if you require transport to the airport so that we can reserve one of our luxury Mercedes limousines.

In order to facilitate your check-out for today, we would like to take this opportunity to present you with a copy of your up-dated charges, so that you may review them at your convenience. Should you find any irregularities or have any questions regarding the attached charges, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We wish you a pleasant onward journey today, and hope to have the privilege of welcoming you back to the hotel again in the near future.

Sincerely yours,

(Name)

Front Office Manager

Note: Before reading on, and bearing in mind what has been said so far, you might like to consider this example in some detail. Ask yourself what its purpose is and how well it achieves it. Check whether you understand it, and see if you find its tone – addressing a guest of a hospitality business – suitable. Make notes of any comments you have, which you can refer back to later.

Now, some observations: what are we to make of such a letter? It is, necessarily a standard one used many times each day. It came to my notice when it came under my door and taking note of the bit about late checkouts “… will be happy to assist you” I went to Reception to take advantage. Not only was I told, Sorry, we’re too full to do that today, so were a dozen other people during the ten minutes I stood at the desk. So, the first thing to say is that the letter is so badly expressed that it does more harm than good, causing as much disappointment as satisfaction because it says clearly that something will happen when it should really saying something may only sometimes be possible.

It is also very old fashioned with rather pompous sounding phrases such as: we wish to point out that and we would like to take this opportunity, when something shorter, more straightforward and businesslike would surely be better. It almost suggests that the account may be wrong (irregularities), and everything is expressed from an introspective point of view: We, we and we again leading into every point. No, it is not good and your own analysis may well run longer.

At base, the key problem is perhaps intention. What is the letter designed to do? To:

• Simply remind people to pay the bill?

• Make check-out quicker or easier?

• Sell a transport service to the airport?

• Persuade people to come and stay again? (and thus presumably give an impression of efficiency and good service)

• Just say, Thank you.

Because it mixes up all of these to some extent, it fails to do justice to any of them. For example, nothing about the checkout procedure is explained nor are reasons given as to why someone should stay again. Yet this is surely a straightforward letter; perhaps that is why it was given inadequate thought. As well as making an immediate point about standard letters – use them by all means, but make sure they are good – it leads neatly to the next point below.

A FRAGILE PROCESS

We can all recognise the really bad report, without structure or style, but with an excess of jargon, convoluted sentences and which prompts only the one thought: What is this trying to say? But such documents do not have to be a complete mess to fail in their purpose. They are inherently fragile. One wrongly chosen word may dilute understanding or act to remove what would otherwise be a positive impression made.

Even something as simple as a spelling mistake (and, no, computer spell chequers – sic - are not infallible) may have a negative effect.

I will never forget, in my first year in a consulting firm after meetings, deliberations and more meetings, a written proposal being sent. A week later an envelope arrived from the company concerned. Inside was a single sheet of paper. It was a copy of the title page of the proposal and on it was written, in red ink the three words No thank you; this alongside a red ring drawn around one typed word – the organisation’s misspelt name. For a long while after that everything was checked very much more carefully. The moral is clear.

As a very first rule to drum into your subconscious – check, check and check again. Mistakes that remind us to do so are on public display (like a notice saying Do not cross this bridge when this notice is underwater).

Whether the cause of a document being less good than it should be is major or minor, the damage may result. The quality of writing matters.

A SIGNIFICANT OPPORTUNITY

Whatever the reasons for poor writing may be, suffice it to say that, if prevailing standards are low, then there is a major opportunity here for those who better that standard. More so for those who excel; and, remember the permanence of the written word - your bad documents might just come back to haunt you later.

So, effective business writing is a vital skill. There may be a great deal hanging on a document doing the job it is intended to do – accurate action, a decision, a sale, a financial result, or a personal reputation. For those who can acquire sound writing skills very real opportunities exist. The more you write, and the more important the documents you create, the truer this is. Quite simply, if you write well then you are more likely to achieve your business goals.

This point cannot be overemphasised. One sheet of paper may not change the world, but – well written – it can influence many events in a way that affects results and those doing the writing.

And you can write well, indeed most people can learn to turn out good business writing. Writing that is well tailored to its purpose and likely to create the effect it intends.

Good business writing need not be difficult. It is a skill certainly: but one which can be developed with study and practice. Some effort may be involved, and certainly practice helps, but it could be worse. Somerset Maugham is quoted as saying: “There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are”. Business writing is not so dependent on creativity, though this is involved, and it is subject to certain rules. Rules, of course, are made to be broken. But they do act as useful guidelines and can therefore be a help. Here in reviewing how to go about the writing task, I will mention something about when to follow the rules and when to break them. So, what makes good business writing?

INHERENT DANGERS

Despite predictions about the “paperless office”, offices seem as surrounded (submerged?) by paper as ever. Indeed as documentation is essentially only a form of communication, this is likely to remain so. However a message is put over, even if there is no paper, as with something sent through e-mail for example, it has to be written.

With no communication any organisation is stifled; indeed nothing much would happen. Communication – good communication – should oil the wheels of organisational activity and facilitate action. This is true of even the simplest memo, and is certainly so of something longer and more complex like a report.

Communication is – inherently – inclined to be less than straightforward. If this is true of tiny communications, how much more potential for misunderstanding does a twenty-five page report present? And with written communication the danger is that any confusion lasts. There is not necessarily an immediate opportunity for the reader to check (the writer might be a hundred miles away), and a misunderstanding on page 3 may skew the whole message and negate the purpose of an entire report.

SERIOUS, AND VERY SERIOUS

Once something is in writing any error that causes mis-understanding is made permanent, at least for a while. The dangers of ill-thought out writing are varied. It may:

• Be wrong, but still manage to convey its meaning, like the cook book that advises: To stop your eyes watering when chopping onions, put them in the freezer. Or the Air New Zealand advertisement that offered: Round the world tickets from £698 return. Do some round the world trips somehow fail to return? Such things may amuse but it will probably be understood. No great harm done perhaps, though the first might just throw doubt on the credibility of the recipe. Indeed, any fault tends to highlight the possibility of other, more serious, problems.

• Try too hard to please, ending up giving the wrong impression. In one Renaissance Hotel there are signs on the coffee shop tables that say: COURTESY OF CHOICE: The concept and symbol of “Courtesy of Choice” reflect the centuries-old philosophy that acknowledges differences while allowing them to exist together in harmony. “Courtesy of Choice” accommodates the preferences of individuals by...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface The rationale: dangers of poor writing and opportunities of good
• 1. Introduction Good writing is the business equivalent of an open goal
• 2. Getting it down right
• 3. Making language work for you
• 4. Making it persuasive
• 5. Horses for courses: linking style to method
• 6. The brief, the very brief and the ubiquitous email
• 7. At length: reports and prososals
• Postscript
• About the author