Introduction what to expect from the book
Consider the vast amount of text that your organisation produces. Picture the sea of memos and the stack of reports you receive on an annual basis. Or think of the countless e-mails, presentations and plans you write for your colleagues. Business writing, the process by which such texts are created, is a pervasive activity within any organisation.
This internal dialogue - much like the human brain that spends most of its energy talking to itself - has tremendous impact on your organisation’s ability to compete. Good business writing captures knowledge, aligns people with the organisation’s strategy, and catalyses organisational change. It can also be a superb tool for corporate communication and sales purposes.
optimal use
In my experience, there are two reasons why organisations do not make optimal use of business writing. First of all, most aren’t adjusting quickly enough to the fact that stakeholders are becoming fed up with spin doctoring and corporate doublespeak. Employees, customers and investors are increasingly demanding clear communication and organisations unable to comply run the risk of alienating these crucial allies.
A second obstacle is that few employees are trained to write about the complex issues that characterise business. Writing is not an arcane form of art, but a skill like leadership that matures with training and experience. Writing talent helps, but good writing is essentially built on thorough preparation and disciplined execution. This means that anyone can learn to write at a reasonable level of proficiency.
This book aims to improve your writing skills by teaching you how to use the principles of business writing. These principles – focus, purpose, meaning, substance, structure, clarity and humility – have been derived from my work as a journalist, copywriter, corporate communication specialist and business writer. They reflect my experience of what works and my personal views of how business writing should be used within the organisation.
integrate what you learn
The book combines a conceptual approach with a practical one to help you more fully integrate what you will learn into your daily work. The principles – specifically what they mean and how they can be applied - are discussed individually and presented as a coherent model that mirrors issues facing modern organisations. The book also suggests how to apply the principles to day-to-day business topics, and explains how to manage the writing process from beginning to end.
You can use the principles in this book to communicate about leadership, change, culture and other strategic business issues. The principles will allow you to create a sense of shared purpose among stakeholders and capture valuable knowledge. The book also teaches writing strategies that you can apply to anything from simple memos to complex proposals. Mastery of this system will make you self-reliant, more insightful and more effective when it comes to business writing.
Language is a powerful kind of magic. This book is an attempt to identify its underlying structure in the context of business and present it in a way that is easy to understand. It is by no means definitive or without fault, even though I have done my utmost to apply these principles to the book itself. Whatever you think of the principles, I hope you will find in them something that helps you write better than you have written before.
Ilja van Roon, April 2006
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