Ultimate Guide to Business Writing

Discover all the Secrets of Creating and Managing Business Documents

Julian Maynard-Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000348163
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Writing
• Index: Business

The Ultimate Guide to Business Writing is a comprehensive guide on how to write any kind of business document. Written clearly in an engaging voice, it explains in depth the whole process: from determining objectives to establishing readers' needs, conducting research, outlining, and designing a template; to writing the first draft; to editing for meaning, accuracy, concision, style and emotional impact; to creating glossaries and indices; to proofreading and working with reviewers.

The book also explains how to exploit the psychology of perception and motivation, collaborate effectively with business colleagues, manage documents holistically across an organisation, and deal with the other everyday practicalities of managing knowledge in a corporate environment. Every section of the book is packed with questions to stimulate thinking and generate meaningful answers, and dozens of examples of what works and why. The book's also rich in practical examples drawn from real life, anecdotes, humour, and visual aids. But the advice isn't just practical and anecdotal: it's also rigorously supported by scientific evidence from notable linguists and psychologists such as Steven Pinker, Daniel Goleman and Yellowlees Douglas. And anyone keen to explore further will benefit from the bibliography and links to videos and other online resources.

The book is ideal not just for professional business writers, such as editors, technical writers, copywriters and creative directors; it's also suitable for anyone whose job requires them to write, whether it's something as simple as an email or as complex as a set of policies or a handbook.

1

How to write any document

You’re about to discover all the steps for creating any business document. The steps are organised to guide you as efficiently as possible from conception to completion, so you’re best off following them in order – at least to start with. You can always dip in and out for help in specific areas once you’re familiar with the process.

With that in mind, let’s crack on with the first step.

Consider what outcomes you want

Every business document needs to achieve an outcome, or what’s the point of writing it? You write a policy to get colleagues to do good stuff (and stop doing bad stuff); marketing material to persuade buyers to buy from you, not your competitors; functional specs so that the tech guys know what to build. And so on.

So before you even think of writing anything, be it an email or a 200-page manual, here’s what you need to work out first:

1. What outcomes do I want?
2. Who’s my audience?
3. Why should they care?

Consider the person who asked for my help with a document and answered these questions with, ‘Dunno. My manager just asked me to write it.’ How would you rate that document’s chances of achieving its desired outcomes? Writing without knowing your outcomes and audience is like driving without a destination, eyes squeezed shut and deaf to the shouts from your passengers.

Once you’re clear on your outcomes (your destination), your satnav for everything is your readers: who they are, where they want to be taken, and why they’d want to journey with you. This is true even for that most all-about-me genre of books, autobiographies, because autobiographies that don’t appeal to their readers simply won’t get read. And, as a Chinese proverb puts it, an unread book is just a pile of paper.

It’s a point I’ll bang on and on and on about throughout this book: why should your readers care? And how can you show them you care?

By finding out who they are and what they want.

So let’s look at that next.

Research your readers

The only two reasons people read anything are because they need to or because they want to. And even when they need to they often won’t, if it’s a chore to do so. Think of those terms and conditions so boring we click ‘Accept’ without reading them: for all we know, we’ve unwittingly agreed to sell Google or Amazon our kidneys.

Our job as writers, then, is to understand what our readers need and want. And what’s the best way to do that? Ask them – and listen. The book Mindwise, by psychologist Nicholas Epley, gives plenty of compelling evidence that people wildly overestimate their skill at knowing others, even their spouses. In short, if you guess what people are thinking you’re likely to be wrong. You need to ask and verify.

Talk to your readers

When communicating with readers, ask yourself the following questions.

Am I hearing my readers’ needs first-hand?

Unless you communicate directly with your readers, be they internal or external, it’s easy to misconstrue or lose sight of their needs: especially when intermediaries with their own agendas get in the way, such as project managers pushing hard to meet delivery dates, account managers chasing revenue, or department heads wanting to cut costs.

Best of all are face-to-face discussions with your readers. If your readers are colleagues in the same office, go and talk to them rather than emailing them. If they’re colleagues in another office or external people try to meet them anyway, eg through site visits, training courses and seminars. Other options include user groups, surveys, questionnaires and suchlike: you can run an online survey quite easily using a web tool such as www.surveymonkey.com or www.smartsurvey.co.uk.

Am I communicating regularly?

It’s important to stay on track by asking questions such as ‘Does it cover everything you need?’ and ‘Is this the right level of depth for you?’ and ‘Is there anything you find confusing?’ Avoid asking vague questions such as ‘Do you like it?’ or ‘Does it look OK?’ because you risk distractions such as people bickering over the font or your writing style. The main thing at this stage is to ensure that readers ‘get’ the content and that it meets their needs. And if it’s a document that requires approval, you’re much more likely to get sign-off first time round if you’ve engaged your audience throughout.

Regular engagement also protects you as the writer. I know freelance writers who’ve been denied payment by unscrupulous clients claiming they didn’t follow the brief, and it’s harder for a client to rip you off if you have an audit trail to prove you delivered exactly what they asked for.

When do people need this information?

Most people when having to write a document think to ask, ‘When does it need to be finished?’ But a smarter question is, ‘Who needs what by when?’ That way you can apply triage if time’s short. For example:

• Different people may need the same information at different times. Say you’re writing a functional spec for new software: it makes sense to ensure that the design team get their information before the developers get theirs, since design comes before development.
• Or maybe the same readers need some information now and the rest later, in which case you can concentrate on perfecting the ‘now’ information and ignore the ‘later’ information for a later release.
• Or maybe your readers need to get the big picture right now but aren’t too fussed about the details, in which case you can give them a draft then continue editing while they’re reviewing the draft.

Whatever the scenario, if you’re pressed for time the order of the steps in this guide will help you, as early steps (eg designing the structure and clarifying your meaning) are more fundamental than the later ones (eg trimming words).

Finally, always allow more time for delivering a document than you think you need. Why? Well, first you need to allow for contingencies such as holidays, uncooperative or tardy colleagues, and people being moved to other projects. Second, there’s often a long chain of dependencies between writing and delivery, such as getting documents reviewed and approved.

It’s especially important to plan well for documents with hard deadlines such as submissions to a regulator or bid responses to a prospect. In such cases, it’s wise to plan dates backwards. For example, ‘If the regulator is to get the document by 30 November, the printers need at least a day, which means it needs to be signed off by the board no later than 28 November, and allowing a week for board review means the executive committee needs the document by 21 November …’. And so on.

Which media do readers prefer?

Ask your audience how they want the information presented. For example, there’s often an automatic assumption that board members want PowerPoint decks, but decks are usually a bad choice for anything other than animated slideshows (something we’ll examine in more detail later).

Consider other media beyond Microsoft Word v PowerPoint, such as your company’s intranet, a wiki or training videos, or even a blend of media. For this guide I’m assuming you’re writing a document, but always bear in mind that other options are available and may be better.

Have I instilled trust and openness?

Have you ever seen the TV series Undercover Boss? The premise is simple: a senior executive is disguised and takes a low-level job in their own firm. It’s only then, once they’ve gained the trust of their employees, that they discover what their employees really think, feel or even do. You need to build a similar level of trust: particularly if you’re senior or your role could be perceived as policing (such as internal audit); or if people feel threatened, eg if your company’s planning layoffs. Otherwise, people are likely to tell you what you want to hear – or stonewall you.

For example, I once did a contract where the boss announced that several job roles would be offshored, and simultaneously expected people to start sharing more information about what they did. And guess what? Everyone clammed up.

Understand your readers’ needs

To understand your readers’ needs, ask yourself the following questions.

What do readers wa...