Black and white close-up of a pen writing in cursive on lined paper
Image by Jonathan Kim, https://www.flickr.com/photos/jkim1/452830868, CC BY-NC 2.0

Writing effectively is a superpower that can significantly increase your impact

This first appeared in my article on compositional reporting, however I wanted to make sure it reaches a broader audience and expand on it a little.

First - Think About Your Audience

First and foremost it's about the people receiving the message, and their priorities not yours:

  • Are they going to have the context they need?
  • Are you using terminology they will recognise?
  • Are they going to understand why you are telling them something? Have you answered the "So what?" question.
  • Is there a clear call to action - what do you want or expect from them, and how should they feel about it?

Keep It Brief

Keep in mind that brevity and clarity are an art-form and worth taking the time to master. You will reap the rewards many times over by avoiding confusion, miscommunication, and saving recipients time and cognitive load.

“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book – what everyone else does not say in a book.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Reducing cognitive load is key. How can you set things out in such a way that your likely time-starved reader will know why you are writing to them, what you need from them, and how they should feel about it. While including sufficient context that any decision is well informed but not drowning in detail. What are the likely objections or follow-ups and can you address them early to make the decision or action a simple one?

Structure

I find that the McCarthy 4MAT structure is very helpful when outlining a summary. It was designed for teaching and training. Good business writing has a lot in common with the briefest and most succinct lessons so much of it is directly transferable:

  1. Why: Why am I telling you this? Why should you care?
  2. What: What is the context? What do I want you to do? What has happened, not happened? What are the facts of the matter? And what has been done so far? What does this mean for the reader?
  3. How: How are we going about it? How are we managing it? How would we like you to react/respond/feel? How do we propose to address the issue or decide?
  4. What if? What if it goes wrong? What are the risks? What are likely scenarios from here that have been considered? What are the mitigations should they get worse / better? What is the upside or benefit? In the case of a risk what are the implications - likely impact / likelihood?

Bottom Line Up Front

BLUF - Bottom Line Up Front has a lot in common with this style and is worth a read through - especially with regards to the use of simple direct language. If you are concerned some people may not have all the context they need this can always be included further down in a clearly flagged details section that can be skipped by those who feel they don't need them.

Spare Them the Details

Sometimes you have done significant work and analysis, and there can therefore be a temptation to include it. However if the conclusions are what is relevant to your audience then use 4MAT to describe what you did and the conclusions. You can then link to the full analysis should someone need the details: eg. "We needed to understand the DEF, so we ran numerical analysis of ABC. We identified XYZ. It is therefore recommended we EFG. Details of analysis attached."

Make a Stronger Case by Making Fewer Good Points

It has been shown that people judge the strength of an argument by averaging the strength of all the points made. Additionally if there are gaps in the weaker points that are open to challenge they can distract from the core argument. It is therefore better to give a few excellent points and leave it there. (Weaver, K., Garcia, S. M. and Schwarz, N. (2012) “The Presenter’s Paradox”, Journal of Consumer Research, 39(3), pp. 445–460.)

I hope you find this helpful.

Kind Regards, Andy