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    Smart Skills: Business Writing
    Smart Skills: Business Writing
    Smart Skills: Business Writing
    Ebook153 pages2 hours

    Smart Skills: Business Writing

    By Patrick Forsyth

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    About this ebook

    Book 3 of the Smart Skills series: practical guides to mastering vital business skills and techniques. Using proven strategies from business experts, these essential smart skills can empower anyone with the tools to get ahead.

    Gain a competitive edge at work with your business writing skills.

    Effective business writing skills can help you win that million-pound contract, earn a promotion, resolve a dispute or generate a significant increase in business leads. Our Smart Skills book offers proven, practical advice on how to put over a clear and impressive message in a style that's deceptively simple and even enjoyable to read. These guidelines will teach you how to:

    • Write and format business reports, proposals or presentations
    • Recognise the dangers of poor writing
    • Write effectively under time pressure
    • Use persuasive techniques and structures
    • Deal with all types of documentation from a "simple" email to a long report

    Accessibly written, it includes checklists, templates and exercises to help you work through even the most basic building blocks of good writing. Business Writing provides an antidote to the dangers of 'gobbledegook' and 'business-speak' and allows you to generate any kind of document with confidence. After reading this guide, your writing will be effective, engaging and memorable- a vital skill for all professionals.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLegend Press
    Release dateApr 30, 2018
    ISBN9781787198210
    Smart Skills: Business Writing
    Author

    Patrick Forsyth

    Patrick Forsyth has worked for many years as a business consultant and management trainer. Linked to this he is the author of more than fifty business and management, personal development, self-help and career books (for example, Successful time management and How to write reports and proposals, both published by Kogan Page.In recent years his writing has expanded into broader areas. He has had a humorous book published about miscommunication, Empty when half full, described by one reviewer as “hilarious”. In addition, he has had short stories published and also writes about writing for Writing Magazine for which he also pens a monthly column.He first travelled to South East Asia some thirty years ago, and has visited regularly – especially to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand - for both work and holidays every year since. His travels have produced two further published books: Beguiling Burma and Smile because it happened about Thailand (both are published by ReThink Press).He lives in the United Kingdom, in Maldon in Essex, where he writes looking out over the River Blackwater.

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      Book preview

      Smart Skills - Patrick Forsyth

      author

      PREFACE

      THE RATIONALE: DANGERS OF POOR WRITING AND OPPORTUNITIES OF GOOD

      What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

      Samuel Johnson

      Communications is an inherent part of business. Yet successful communication can be difficult. Poor communication can cause problems. This may involve a momentary hiatus as two people try to sort out exactly what is meant. Or it may cause a major misunderstanding that causes a project of some sort to be stopped in its tracks. Why is this? There are many reasons, but one is certainly an assumption that what is being done is not difficult, coupled with a subsequent unwillingness to check out the principles on which success might be based. Perhaps that is actually two reasons already, and more are investigated later.

      Furthermore some kinds of communication are inherently more difficult than others. The intentions of communication may vary. It may need to inform, explain, motivate, challenge, prompt a debate or more; and such intentions are not mutually exclusive, one communication may need to do several of these things at once. Communications designed with a specific purpose, say to be persuasive, adds another layer and putting something in writing can add further complications. I once stayed in a hotel with a sign inside the bedroom door saying: In the interests of security please ensure your bedroom door is firmly shut before entering or leaving the room. It would be a good trick if you can do it. And that is just one sentence – someone wrote it, printed it and posted it around the hotel and still no one noticed it was rubbish!

      On paper

      There is a further problem, and that is that most people are better at communicating face to face than in other ways. Other methods all have their disadvantages. The telephone is good, immediate, maybe quick and easy, but try describing to someone over the telephone how to, say, tie a shoelace. Think about it for a second. You know how to do it, you could easily show someone else – but using only your voice, it is somehow more of a problem.

      One method that seems consistently to render people less articulate is when they have to put something in writing. Your manager wants a note about something, the Board need a report or proposal, and my editor wants a book (and there are still many thousands of words to go). Business writing almost seems to hinder good communication. People who can talk about something and usually get their message over successfully, find themselves descending into a muddle of business-speak and gobbledegook, writing something over formal, over long and – at worst – forgetting somewhere along the way exactly what their objectives were in the first place.

      Of course, putting something into written form can be a chore, and its being so can extend the task as agonising over the best form of words to make permanent takes time. Hence this book: the intention here is clear. It is to assist the process of communicating successfully when it must be done in writing. This may mean a letter (or e-mail), or it may mean a report or a proposal and various kinds of letter and document in between. It might also mean copy for a brochure or a newsletter. A message may be sent internally: to a group of staff or an individual member of your team – or upwards, perhaps to your manager. It may be sent externally: to a supplier, a customer or to many customers (this latter may include direct mail letters). The circumstances can vary. But the intention is always the same: to make things clear and achieve your objectives to inform, persuade or whatever.

      Whatever your circumstances, this book is designed to help you see more clearly how to go about writing clearly and powerfully. There is no one magic formula, as so often what makes a business technique work is, though it may be based on certain fundamental approaches, a matter of attention to a number of details. Certainly that is the case here.

      It is, however, possible. You can write with clarity if you go about it in the right way and, if you do that, you will also begin to do it faster as well. In a busy life that is something worthwhile too. In the coming pages we will see how all this can be done, starting with a look at some of the difficulties of communication and how to avoid them.

      CHAPTER 1

      INTRODUCTION: GOOD WRITING IS THE BUSINESS EQUIVALENT OF AN OPEN GOAL

      Life in an organisation can be busy and writing anything can seem a chore. There are surely more important things to be done – people to meet, decisions to be made, action to be taken. Yet all of these things and more can be dependent on written communication. A letter or memo may set up a meeting, a report may present a case and prompt a decision, and a proposal may act persuasively to make sure certain action is taken or a particular option is selected.

      But reading business papers can be a chore also, and they will not achieve their purpose unless they are read, understood and do their job well enough to actively prompt the reader to action. The first rule is to accept that: Business writing must earn a reading.

      THE NATURE OF WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

      You are probably both a reader and a writer of business documents. Consider the nature of the written word with your reader’s hat on for a moment. Do you read everything that crosses your desk? Do you read every word of the things you do read? Do you read everything from the first word through in sequence, or do you dip into things? Almost certainly the answers make it clear that you do not treat all written material equally. Some documents are more likely to be read than others. Of course, some subjects demand your attention. Who ignores a personal note from the Managing Director? But the fact that some things have to be read often does not make their reading any easier or more pleasurable.

      Good writing, which means, not least, something that is easy to read and understand, will always be likely to get more attention than sloppy writing. Yet we all know that prevailing standards in this area are by no means universally good.

      Why is this? Maybe it is education; or lack of it. Often school (and sometimes even university) assists little with the kind of writing we find ourselves having to do once we work in an organisation. Maybe it is lack of feedback; perhaps managers are too tolerant of what is put in front of them. If more poor writing was rejected, and had to be rewritten, then more attention might be brought to bear on the task.

      Habits are important here too. We all develop a style of writing and may find it difficult to shift away from it. Worse, bad habits may be reinforced by practice. For example, word-processing means that the ubiquitous standard document can often be used year after year with no one prepared to say: Scrap it even if they notice how inadequate it is.

      FIRM FOUNDATIONS

      Errors are easy to find. For example at a railway station: Passengers must not leave their luggage unattended at any time or they will be taken away and destroyed. We can learn more from the approach taken to writing, than from the one odd phrase. So at this stage, let’s analyse writing through an example, and review a typical business letter. Many of us have probably received something like this, usually addressed by name and slipped under the door to greet us as we rise on the last day of a stay in a hotel. The example that follows is a real one, though the originator’s name (a Singapore hotel) has been removed.

      EXAMPLE 1

      Dear Guest

      We would like to thank you for allowing us to serve you here at the XXXX Hotel and hope that you are enjoying your stay.

      Our records show that you are scheduled to depart today, and we wish to point out that our check-out time is 12 noon. Should you be departing on a later flight, please contact our front desk associates who will be happy to assist you with a late check-out. Also, please let us know if you require transport to the airport so that we can reserve one of our luxury Mercedes limousines.

      In order to facilitate your check-out for today, we would like to take this opportunity to present you with a copy of your up-dated charges, so that you may review them at your convenience. Should you find any irregularities or have any questions regarding the attached charges, please do not hesitate to contact us.

      We wish you a pleasant onward journey today, and hope to have the privilege of welcoming you back to the hotel again in the near future.

      Sincerely yours,

      (Name)

      Front Office Manager

      Note: Before reading on, and bearing in mind what has been said so far, you might like to consider this example in some detail. Ask yourself what its purpose is and how well it achieves it. Check whether you understand it, and see if you find its tone – addressing a guest of a hospitality business – suitable. Make notes of any comments you have, which you can refer back to later.

      Now, some observations: what are we to make of such a letter? It is, necessarily a standard one used many times each day. It came to my notice when it came under my door and taking note of the bit about late checkouts "… will be happy to assist you" I went to Reception to take advantage. Not only was I told, Sorry, we’re too full to do that today, so were a dozen other people during the ten minutes I stood at the desk. So, the first thing to say is that the letter is so badly expressed that it does more harm than good, causing as much disappointment as satisfaction because it says clearly that something will happen when it should really saying something may only sometimes be possible.

      It is also very old fashioned with rather pompous sounding phrases such as: we wish to point out that and we would like to take this opportunity, when something shorter, more straightforward and businesslike would surely be better. It almost suggests that the account may be wrong (irregularities), and everything is expressed from an introspective point of view: We, we and we again leading into every point. No, it is not good and your

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