INSIGHTS FROM THE CHEMEKETA CENTER FOR BUSINESS & INDUSTRY
Bad or good: How does your business writing rate? We’ve all seen the costs of bad business writing: • A poorly-documented procedure leads to operations errors. • An email with typos and grammar errors leaves a customer with the impression that the author is sloppy with details. • A team member has a great idea, but no one can understand the memo explaining it. Russell Terry is a coach/ instructor for the Customized Training department at CCBI. He got started coaching writing in 2012 by working in The Writing Center at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill while he was earning his doctorate in political science. In addition to his work for CCBI, he is also a writing coach for MBA students at Willamette University. For information, contact CCBI Customized Training at 503.399.5181.
If we turn those examples around, we see the benefits of good business writing: • Clear documentation for a procedure prevents errors. • A well-written email makes a good impression. • A clear, concise and organized memo effectively communicates a good idea. There’s plenty of research on how effective writing can save a company money, including case studies of initiatives at General Electric, Federal Express and KeyBank. It’s clearly worthwhile to invest in your team’s writing skills. Where to begin? Here are a few ideas: I highly recommend The HBR [Harvard Business Review] Guide to Better Business Writing by Bryan A. Garner. I especially like the guide’s breadth. You can think of it as a “sampler platter.” If a section is especially useful, you can look for longer references that focus on that area. For example, if your team loves the appendix “A Primer of Good Usage,” which explains things like principle vs. principal, it might be worthwhile to invest in a usage dictionary. The website plainlanguage.gov offers a free guide to writing in plain language. While the guide’s primary audience is people working for the federal government, most of it applies to any kind of professional writing. Much of the guide is organized
Home of Western Oregon University Low Cost Power; Gig Speed Internet Great Small Town Life
around individual pieces of advice (example: “Avoid double negatives and exceptions to exceptions”) which it explains and then illustrates with great before/after examples. A writing coach is another tool to improve your employees’ writing. A key advantage of a coach over a writing class is that the coach will focus sessions on what the employee needs to learn. This means not spending time teaching content the employee already knows, nor teaching things not relevant to the writing the employee is doing on the job. A coach will also go at the employee’s pace. Whatever approach you take, improving your team’s writing is a smart investment.
www.ci.monmouth.or.us 12 Enterprise Spring 2019
Phone: 503-838-0722 Workforce Pipeline