With email now the standard form of communication in most, if not all companies, the need for clear, concise writing is more important than ever.
Often, without appreciating the impact on clients and customers, businesses produce emails, reports and letters that:
- Do not get to the point
- Are poorly structured
- Contain ambiguous language and grammatical errors
- Are too long
- Are badly punctuated
Does it matter?
Yes - in today's challenging climate, businesses need to communicate professionally and effectively.
Our written communication could be said to be the "silent salesman" or "ambassador" of the company. For this reason, how well we write is just as important as the message it contains.
From an image perspective, a first rate face-to-face client meeting can be totally undermined with a sub-standard proposal or report.
It's not just communicating with the external client that matters. Internal audit departments need to write reports that get a clear, concise message across in a way that generates cooperation rather than antagonism.
So what is the secret?
Often, where a reader struggles to get the point, the writer struggled to put the point down on paper or on screen, in the first place.
We've all had the unpleasant task of writing an important letter or report and deleting countless drafts and dumping them in the desktop or office bin.
The secret is to organise your thoughts before you begin to write anything at all. This is easier said than done. However, there are powerful tools that can help you bring clarity to your message by planning a clear structure before you start writing.
Short and sweet
Once you have a structure to your message your problem won't be writer's block but writer's cramp. The message is - get it all down: and then edit. It is often possible to reduce reports by 50% or more by using simple editing tools. You can even use a straightforward formula to calculate the clarity of your written work.
Forgotten lessons from Hutton
Whilst accuracy, brevity and clarity are critical in written communications, we appear to have forgotten the lessons of the Hutton enquiry which highlighted the hidden power of email. However, inappropriate topics discussed in internal email do not have to get as far as the courts to be damaging. A simple click on the forward or copy button to the newspapers can be just as career limiting for the writer.
In summary
Even if you know what your point is, organising your thoughts before you write will ultimately save you and your reader time and anxiety.
To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw who started a letter to his aunt with, "I'm sorry this letter is so long. If I had more time it would have been a good deal shorter".
The Effective Writing Skills CPD course takes place in Cork on 19th May and in Dublin on 15th October. Please see the ICAI website for further details.