Imagine a meeting. You’re trying to focus on what’s being said, but all you can think about is “This is such a waste of my life. Why am I here?” The clock’s hands aren’t moving and you begin to suspect that the air has been sucked out of the room and replaced with sleeping gas. Sounds familiar?
While we’re all busy and keep running out of time, we can’t avoid getting sucked into black holes of pointless meetings that leave no survivors. Is it the way of the universe to force us to slow down or simply the price we have to pay for working with humans? Anyway, bewailing “Why, God, why?” isn’t going to solve the problem, so let’s talk about what might.
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Most of the documents you produce will outlive their context. While working on a document, you may be (better be) crystal clear about why it’s being written and what it is supposed to accomplish. However, a month from now, would you (or whoever may open it) be able to tell the reason the document was created, its purpose, who contributed to the content, and what defined the scope? What about a year from now? If these aspects are not clearly spelled out – most likely, someone will call you with questions. From experience, they usually call when you’ve already moved on to another project and can only muster a vague recollection of the document out of bits and pieces from the “not relevant anymore” file in your brain.
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This article was inspired by the following example of business writing (it is an opening of a “Message from the CEO”, which was emailed to all employees of an unnamed Canadian company, cited verbatim):
“We have been working to transform our company by bringing a clear and differentiated offer to the marketplace and setting new standards for customer focus, performance, our behaviours and values.
The organization has one agenda and our collective ambition to see the company become what we believe it can, is clear.
The success we’ve achieved in the last 36 months in changing the trajectory of the company has come from thousands of things we are doing better. As we continue moving this work forward, the leadership changes announced have been made giving careful consideration to our strategy, opportunities to simplify the organization and broaden mandates.”
It took the author more than 100 words to say “I am pleased to announce the new executive appointments” (9 words) – yes, this was the topic, if you haven’t guessed.
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Constructive advice is crucial for improving in anything, and writing is no exception. Today, I am sharing with you my thoughts about providing feedback on writing of others.
You may have the best of intentions, but giving people advice they didn’t ask for is like shoving vitamin C pills down their throat, muttering “eat it, it’s good for you”. My daughter is the only person I can do this to. If you know someone whose career is crippled by their inability to clearly express themselves in writing, and if you feel you must help – bring it up to them once (very gently: “I heard of an excellent course on business writing. Would you be interested in signing up?”) and gauge their reaction.
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Never deliver (or respond to) an emotionally charged message via email, unless, of course, it’s good news and the emotions in question are ":)". I re-learned this lesson the hard way not so long ago, when a string of fiery messages almost killed my relationship with a family member in a matter of hours. Even though I was not the one to initiate the attack, I feel somewhat responsible for the end result, no matter how many times I repeat to myself and others “She started it!”
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