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If a man has nothing to say, he should refrain from giving evidence of that fact in writing .
—GEORGE ELIOT
Succeeding in corporate America is challenging in the best of times, but when economic conditions are weak, demands increase—and fewer people are asked to do more—and in less time. In fact, many of you are so pressed for time you often have to slam away at your keyboards into the night, working against impossible and competing deadlines. No wonder most of you appear to need a good cry, a dry martini, and a long nap.
Like you, people who read business documents are crying, too, and wishing they could drink martinis and take naps, although not with you. Yet, corporate America almost fights against writing efficiency. Look around you: the landscape is littered with lost opportunities buried in the vast pit of empty words that is the final resting place of most business writing.
It’s not that business people don’t know that good writing is important or can’t write; it’s that they don’t know how to write what counts. So many words are spewed out in the course of every business day like so much toxic waste, and their pernicious effect limits what businesses can accomplish both by eliminating the potential for reflection and discussion and by delaying action.
This book is designed to help you write well, write fast, and whip the competition. This book is for you if you understand that writing is more than a soft skill that everyone already knows how to do. Embrace this book if you see writing as an economic engine that can help you:
Since you already know how to write, you don’t need or have time to learn a whole new approach to writing: what you need are strategies that can help you leverage your skills so that you can write more effective documents in less time—within the political context of corporate America. You need strategies that can help you elevate your voice above the corporate drone and help you achieve the business results you want.
If you want to increase your productivity, forget what you learned in school: forget outlining with Roman numerals, forget brainstorming, and stop obsessing about whether you need a comma before “and” in a series. Focus on what counts, on what will improve your readers’ understanding and prompt the outcomes you want.
Using this book, you can tap into strategies that will help you achieve the measurable economic benefits of effective writing: more business won, new efficiencies achieved, and more professional satisfaction and security.
Just turn to any page.