My grad student, Jessica, struggled to write in college. Then she went to work. She tried to apply what she was taught in college about writing to her workplace writing. But she felt anxious and confused. Where to start? How to get over writer’s block? How to impress the Boss? How to impress her customers? After her Boss gave her a low rating on written communication on her annual performance appraisal, she decided to fix her problem. She went back to school, entering the grad program in professional writing at Towson University, where I met her in my business writing class.
When we talked several weeks into the semester, she shared her story with me. She said she felt so relieved to learn what I was teaching her about writing, lessons she found herself applying immediately on the job. I told her that, in my opinion, there’s a dirty little secret about college writing courses. They don’t do much to teach us how to develop useful content for our workplace readers and how to present that information well. The focus is eloquence and make-believe, not everyday practical writing for real people who are busy but need useful information to do their jobs better.
We know a great way to make workplace writing easier and better. Maybe it can help you….
We met Becky at a writing training we did for a top global professional services company…we’ll call it POSH. Becky spent two years after graduating from a prestigious college earning a Master’s Degree in Public Policy (MPP); she told us at a coffee break that she did extremely well, loved it. Mixed her interests in economics, statistics, policy research, and environmental issues. Crossed disciplines, switching gears at a moment’s notice, always learning something new. Worked in groups, an activity she loved as much as the best artisanal gelato. She said she’d spent a semester in Florence—the bridges, red roofs, the cantuccini with Vin Santo. Visited the Duomo, the Palazzo Vecchio, and the Uffizi. Discovered Tuscany and loved its cuisine, especially the gelato (white chocolate with pistachio sauce).
A Decalogue for workplace writing? Really?
I don't at all mean to depreciate the original עשרת הדברים. But having spent the metaphorical 40 days and 40 nights out in the wild of the workplace, dealing with sentences like this—
Therefore, this improvement is assumed to redistribute the source of the existing passenger generated flows being conveyed by the two existing system branches because of the redistribution of part of the population from the existing Terminal Complex onto the new Concourse. (41 words in the original)
—I feel a revelation coming on. So here are my 10 Commandments for Workplace Writing, with a few annotations.
Are you sure your students exit your class with workplace writing skills they will use confidently when they go to work? Can you name those skills? Can they? Can you explain how every class activity contributes to this goal?
Or…
Performance audit reports, which are always issue-driven (think risk), are declarations built through a series of logical steps, which include identifying appropriate criteria as standards for making judgements, describing condition (what has actually happened), comparing criteria to that condition, and, where there is a gap, stating the effects (consequences) of the gaps, ascertaining the causes of the gaps and, from these causes, presenting recommendations that will resolve the issue.
To kick off this blog that I hope will be of service to those who write audit reports, I wanted to begin with an appreciation. In 1987, I began working with auditors--now called "analysts"--at GAO, and I've come to admire the good thinking they do, the hard work they put in to get a report out the door, and their usual good humor. I've worked with auditors throughout the country and throughout the world by now. But this brief appreciation really focuses on my admiration for the function all auditors perform.
If you don't know him, he's written some great books, which are generally classified as "business books," but they're much more than that...each is different.
I've said before that we teach students WRITING FOR TEACHERS in school, but when they get on a job where they need to write, some of those WRITING-FOR-TEACHERS writing habits betray them. Therefore, I think it's crucial...is there a stronger phrase? (screamingly, clamorously imperative)...that students in a so-called "business/technical writing" course practice writing to a REAL READER who actually cares about the issue the student is writing about--cares in a way that the information the student provides is actually USEFUL, practical, essential information the reader can use to make a decision of some kind. And, if at all possible, THAT reader should "grade" the writing.
