IN THIS CHAPTER

Rising above the pack with good writing

Using writing to achieve your own goals

Applying the three imperatives of strategic writing

Using an easy structure to plan everything you write

We take the ability to read and write for granted today, but human civilization started with, and depends on, the written word. Originating more than 5,000 years ago, writing empowered people to record events and share information with people beyond shouting distance. Over time it enabled us to collectively build knowledge and experience. We could think bigger thoughts and invent better ways of doing things.

For most of the time between early writing and the world we live in, writing skills were typically owned by the governing classes. A mere 50 centuries later, we can all own this magic. And as we know from Superman and his friends, when you own a power, you need to use it to accomplish great things.

But good writing is not an innate skill for most of us. It is definitely a learnable skill, but one that few people develop in school. Even if we got good marks, the academic writing we struggled with is very different from the practical writing we need for everyday and work purposes. This book shows you what this kind of writing looks like: how to do it, how to use it and how improve your own results — all in the cause of achieving what you want. It demonstrates how to create all the business staples from emails to reports to proposals to résumés; visual and oral media — presentations, video and new media — blogs, social media posts and new channels yet to be invented.

Practicing the process I show you in this chapter will lead you to clarify your thinking, understand yourself and your goals better and relate to other people more effectively.

Big promises? Yes. Let’s get right to it.

In this chapter, I highlight the core elements of good business writing and introduce a planning structure that enables you to figure out what to say and how to say it in just about every circumstance. This step-by-step approach to writing works for every communication platform with some adaptation for each. You’ll immediately start to see how to improve your own writing. Once you’ve absorbed the foundation, the chapters that follow demonstrate how to apply these ideas to all your business communication.

Putting Strategic Writing to Work for You

Can you imagine building relationships without language? Think about movies in which two people who don’t speak the same language fall in love. All those soulful gazes and sighs eventually look like uphill work — and the relationship stays pretty superficial — until one person learns the other’s language. Today we initiate many relationships, especially in business, through the written word. In-person contact may follow, or it may not. In many cases we continue to rely on writing to build the connection and collaborate, whether the people are down the street or thousands of miles and hours away.

From everyday email to reports, letters and digital platforms, today’s working world runs on writing. Therefore, the rewards of good writing have never been more extraordinary. The Internet enables us to reach beyond our personal geographic and social reach to almost anyone we want to sell to, collaborate with or learn from. Almost anyone with time and dedication can start a business and sell a product or service, post artwork, publish a book or establish authority as an expert on a subject.

There’s just one catch. Because anyone can do this, unless you are a specialist or have a private niche, the competition is overwhelming.

Consider these statistics about online platforms:

• Email: Globally, 4 billion people use email, and American workers receive an average of 126 business emails daily.
• Twitter: 330 million people globally are active Twitter users, sending 303 million tweets per day.
• Websites: The Internet holds 1.3 billion websites.
• LinkedIn: More than 660 million members in more than 200 countries use this site.
• Blogs: In the United States alone, 31 million active bloggers post monthly or more.

Of course, you’re not competing with all of these email messages, tweets, websites and blogs, or reading more than an infinitesimal fraction of them yourself. But people today — just like you — are extremely selective about what they choose to read because so many options vie for their attention. Your blogs, online posts, proposals and emails will be read according to how well you write them. You’ll build followers according to the value you deliver.

And always, in business writing, “value” means the right content that is well expressed and shaped for the readers you want. Good writing is never “a way with words.” A better maxim is “good writing is good thinking.” That’s why this book also focuses on how to create the right substance for your messages. Once you know what to say, how to say it becomes much easier.

There are few captive audiences in today’s world. Check how many messages you’ve recently received that you must read, and how many you zapped away because they did not immediately interest you. Even if you hold top-down authority, there’s no assurance that your message will be read. Attention, along with respect, must be earned. Writing a message that someone will actually read is an achievement. Writing messages that people will act on demands not just writing that is clear and direct, but also content that aligns with what your readers care about. In other words, today’s business writing needs to be strategic.

What is strategic writing? Planned communication that achieves a set of goals — the goals of your employer if you hold a job, and always, your own goals. The good news is that you already have a solid base for knowing how to write strategically. You’re in command of the three imperatives:

• Your subject: You are invested in your field and possess in-depth knowledge of it.
• Your audience: You know who your audience is, such as prospective employers, coworkers, people who share an interest of your own and target markets for your business.
• Your goal: You know what you want, now and in the bigger-picture future.

Here are some of the things you may not know yet:

• How to choose the right communication tool for the job
• How to capture and retain reader attention
• How to make people care about your message
• How to understand other people’s perspective and predict their responses
• How to gauge the right degree of formality and when to convey emotion
• How to select the right content to make your case
• How to use writing techniques that make your material persuasive
• How to use every single thing you write to build relationships and advance your cause
• How to coordinate your online platforms to achieve your purposes
• How to sharpen your ear and eye so you can spot your own writing problems and fix them

This book shows you how to do all of this.

Notice that in line with my focus on the thinking part of writing, almost every item in this list relates to that. But of course, the technical side of writing — how you use language — matters, too, and I cover that as well. You’ll find a broad resource of practical tips for improving your sentences, use of language and organization. Try out these ideas and tips to discover the techniques that work best for you.

Let’s start with a planning structure that will help you figure out what you want to say and how to say it. You may be surprised at how much better your messages are received, and how much more often you get a positive response, as soon as you start applying it.

Planning and Structuring Every Message

Faced with a blank page and something to accomplish, many people freeze at the first question: Where do I start? The answer? Start with the three components of strategic writing. You already know them:

• Your subject: What you’re writing about
• Your audience: Whom you’re writing to
• Your goal: What you specifically want to accomplish

To create a good message and get the result you want from your reader, you need to think about all of these things more systematically than you ordinarily might.

You must “read” your audience in an organized way, which I show you shortly. And you benefit from visualizing your goal in a broad way. Consider that for almost every message you write, you actually have a whole set of goals beyond the immediate: communicating your own professional image, for example. When you combine your knowledge of the audience with your set of goals, it becomes easy to translate what you know about the subject into content that supports your message.

For example, suppose Jake wants to ask his supervisor, Jane, for a plum assignment on the horizon. He can simply write:

Jane, I’d like to present myself as a candidate for the lead role on the Crystal Project. You know my work and qualifications. I’ll really appreciate the opportunity, and I’ll do a great job. Thanks, Jake

This is may be okay insofar as it’s clear and contains no obvious errors. But it’s definitely not compelling. All Jane learns from the message is that Jake wants the opportunity and thinks he’s qualified.

Jake would fare better if he planned his message out. The first thing to consider with every message is your goal. Thinking about this will show Jake that his goal is more complex than “I want this opportunity.”

The best way to prompt your best thinking, especially when a message is important, is to write down the relevant facts and ideas. When you try to solve a problem “in your head,” you probably find that the same ideas keep circling around and getting past them is hard. Instead, watch magic happen when you write out your thoughts. The concreteness of this action pushes your thinking forward in a natural way: You’ll be surprised at how much more you know, and in many cases, can intuit. Ultimately this saves time because it avoids the inefficiency of mental meandering.

Should Jake ask himself exactly what results he wants his message to produce, his list might look like this:

I want a chance to …

• Exercise more responsibility
• Show off my capabilities — be noticed!
• Expand my know-how about this project’s subject
• Add a management credential to my résumé
• Work with an interesting team and get to know the people

But he should consider even more: the bigger picture. What could a good message accomplish longer term?

• Strengthen my position for future special assignments
• Remind the boss of my good track record
• Present myself as a capable, reliable, resourceful leader
• Build toward a promotion or higher-level job in this organization or elsewhere

From this vantage point, Jake can see the pitch itself as a building block for his overall career ambitions. This is worth a better message than the perfunctory one he dashed off.

So far Jake has really been asking himself why he wants the assignment on a level beyond the obvious. The next basic question to answer is, who’s my audience?

Jake must think about Jane and see his request through her eyes. What skills does she most value? What does she care about? How does she see the job requirements? How can he match up his qualifications with the assignment’s demands in a way the decision-maker will find relevant?

Taking all this into account, Jake might come up with a list like this.

• Important to Jane: Collaborative teaming; people skills; independent initiative; department reputation; effective presentation; track record as team member on earlier projects. I also know she feels weak in systems planning and insecure with new technology. This is an important project she will be judged on herself, so needs all the reassurance I can give that I’ll handle it perfectly.
• Job requires: Leadership abilities; planning skills; ability to meet deadlines; knowledge of XYZ systems; experience in teaming and cross-departmental coordination; good judgment under pressure. A useful plus: tech and presentation skills.

And voilà, Jake has produced a blueprint for content that presents him persuasively. His email can cite his proven track record in accomplishing previous project goals and cite his people skills, ability to work independently and deliver results as a team member and leader, desire to enhance the department’s reputation and confidence in using his demonstrated presentation skills to ensure the project shows effectively.

The weaknesses he pinpoints for Jane give Jake another avenue for presenting himself as the best choice. He can suggest a planning system he’ll use to make the most of staff resources and/or a specific way to incorporate new easy-to-use technology. These elements are particularly apt to catch Jane’s attention.

All Jake’s points must be true! I don’t suggest ever making up qualifications, but rather, that you take the trouble to communicate the best of what is real and what matters in a particular situation.

Further, never assume people understand your capabilities or remember your achievements, even if they’re colleagues who know you well or a boss you’ve worked with for years. Other people don’t have time to put you in perspective, nor, usually, the interest. They’re thinking about themselves. That’s why doing it yourself has such power. But always be careful to avoid a boastful tone.

The beauty part of creating this strong strategic message is that whether or not Jake gets the assignment, he has built toward his longer-range goals of presenting himself as ready, willing and able to take on new challenges and to be seen as more valuable. Writing is an amazing tool for building your positive image over time, message by message, and recognizing the opportunities.

What Jake’s message illustrates is how to use a simple planning structure for everything you write. My shorthand for this is simply:

Goal + Audience = Content

When you define what you want to accomplish with a specific message, and think about the specific person you’re writing to and what points will resonate with them, content decisions almost make themselves.

When you use this structured thinking to plan your messages, whether they’re straightforward updates or proposals or anything in between, you move far toward the heart of good writing — real and relevant substance. Writing is not a system for manipulating words, and don’t ever expect it to camouflage a lack of thought, knowledge or understanding. Good writing presents solid substance clearly, concisely and transparently in ways that make sense to your audience.

I make you a rash promise: For every fraction you improve your writing, you’ll improve your thinking along with it. Plus, you will improve your ability to understand other people, which is infinitely rewarding. It will help you build better relationships and achieve what you want much more often, in every part of your life.

Chapter 2 gives you an in-depth demonstration of this planning structure and shows you how to translate it into successful messages whatever the subject, whatever the medium. While you may pick and choose which sections of the book to read and draw upon them at need, I encourage you to invest in Chapter 2. It gives you the foundation for deciding what to say in any circumstance. Remember that the ideas apply equally to communications that appear to be dominated by visuals or spoken language.

The other essential groundwork for successful writing is how to say what you want. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 demonstrate common-sense techniques that professionals use to spot problems and fix them with the least effort and attention to formal rules.

Many people find the idea of editing a cheerless prospect. But it can be done in down-to-earth ways that have almost nothing to do with mastering grammar. To give you an idea of techniques you can use, here’s one for upgrading your own work immediately: the say-it-aloud diagnosis. When you read your own copy aloud (or whisper it to yourself if you’re not alone), you’ll hear immediate signals that something isn’t working or can work better.

You may notice that your sentences have a sing-song cadence that denotes awkward construction, or that they are overly long and have unnecessary words. You may hear repetitive sounds or inappropriate pauses created by poor word choice or punctuation. You can easily fix such problems, and many more, once you listen to how your writing sounds. It’s not a dumbing-down approach: Many professional writers use it. And read-aloud works beautifully for business writing, which should ideally have a natural, conversational feel.

No matter where you now see yourself on the writing spectrum, I guarantee there’s room for improvement. Most journalists, corporate communicators, bloggers and public relations specialists are obsessive about discovering better ways to write and build their skills. They want to create material that’s ever more interesting, persuasive, informative and engaging. Don’t you?

For people inhabiting any part of the business, nonprofit or government worlds, the rewards of better writing are often immediate. Your email and letters get the results you want much more often. Your proposals are more seriously considered and your reports are more valued. You are perceived as more authoritative, credible and capable. People accord you more respect, often without knowing exactly why. And you move toward your goals faster.

Applying the Goal-Plus-Audience Strategy to More Media

You may have felt challenged at times to write differently for so many forms of communication, or may even have avoided using new or unfamiliar media. Here’s the best encouragement I can give you to experiment and venture forth: The strategizing process is the same for all media, present and future. Planning a brief effective email is very much the same as planning a proposal or blog post, presentation or résumé. The Goal + Audience = Content structure will never fail you, no matter how hard the writing challenge seems.

For this reason, my early examples in this book are “small” messages like email. Once you absorb the thinking process for this everyday communication channel, you’re well prepared to tackle more formal business documents and strategize your digital presence and in-person communication.