Writing organizes how you think.  Go back to your grade school days.   Think about the class where you learned to take notes.  What was that all about?

It was about organizing the information being taught, putting it down on paper so you could read it later and make sense of the subject matter.  The better you captured the teacher’s words and wrote it down so you could digest it, the better you did in that class.

That’s a huge lesson for business leaders.  Writing in a business environment helps you organize the critical issues facing your organization.  By tapping away on your desktop/laptop or writing by hand, you commit to paper/screen what you are thinking.   From there, you can go on to problem-solve, write a more coherent report, determine the direction your company needs to go from a number of options.

It starts with the writing.  That forces you to think, consider and make decisions. 

Next time you are confused or just need to clarify how you see a certain issue, sit down in front of the computer and start tapping, or take out a notepad and jot down what’s going on in your head.  Let it sit for awhile.  Go back a day or two later to reread what you wrote.  Discard the stuff you don’t find relevant.  Focus on the most important information.

Then organize what you’ve written in a format that drives you where you want your business to go.  You may need to put out a rah-rah message to employees, or it might be a letter of remorse to a key account you messed up.   Regardless of the forum, committing your thoughts through the writing process will organize how you think and make you a stronger leader.

Most executives or business leaders probably don’t dwell on their writing abilities.  They have other things to worry about – sales growth, hiring good employees, handling customer complaints, making sure the company stays within its budget.

It’s understandable that s/he doesn’t think, “Dang, my writing is less than average and I really need to work on it.”  They may not think that, but they should.

Writing is important for a leader.  It is fundamental to clear communication, whether that is a message to employees or a memo to customers.  If they don’t “get” your point, you fall a step behind rather than moving a step forward.

There are two ways business leadership can improve its writing/communications:  1) Have key executives take classes in writing that provide useful feedback and tools they can effectively use in their daily assignments.  2) Hire a good communicator who goes over your writing (or does it for you) and improves it.  Neither is a perfect answer, and the choice of a company may depend on the budget or how significant writing is seen as important to the bottom line.

That’s often the struggle in getting commitment from organizations to focus on better communications – how to show the value of the written word.  It’s always been a challenge for writers.  All we can do is keep writing, and hope the big guns see what we do and recognize that the stronger their voice is, the stronger their position is, and the stronger the company becomes.

A major U.S. company sent me the following job lead:  "The Lead Application Architect defines, leads and manages: Application architecture expertise to project and support teams in collaboration with other architecture disciplines; Management of IT application architecture expertise and strategy across application architecture domains while maintaining an enterprise perspective; Accountable for identifying and championing improvement opportunities to evolve the applied and strategic architecture practice and processes; Management and resolution of high level exceptions while influencing leadership to determine outcomes."  That's no BS.  Someone actually wrote that and sent it to me via email.


Can you tell me what that position does?  I didn't think so.  Secondarily, I'm a writer, a corporate communications and social media professional.  So why would they forward an IT position to me?  I don't get that.

The amazing thing about having this type of job description forwarded to you is that the company even let it go out.  It makes them look bad.  It makes them look like they don't even know what they want this person to do once s/he is hired.

So if you put together job descriptions, please write so others can understand, and target people who might actually be able to fill the position.  Be straightforward.  Cut out the jargon.

Descriptions like the one above will get flushed, and you'll sit around wondering why no one applies.  Without new talent, you flounder.  Write it so the applicant understands the position and its demands.   Then you might find some good people.

If you’re a writer, you must know and write with your audience in mind.  That doesn’t mean gather intimate details on everyone reading what you write.  It does mean you shouldn’t get into technical details if you’re addressing a general knowledge-based readership, or vice versa. 

Too often, writers don’t think through “who” they are communicating with.  Sometimes you must craft specialized messages that only attract a few select readers.  You need to get them an urgent message.  At other times, you want to hit as many people as possible, so you paint in broad strokes.

Several years ago, one of our senior leadership team asked me to write a letter of recommendation for a colleague who was applying to an Assistant Chief of Police position in a neighboring community.  I worked on issues regularly with police departments and understood the language and tone they used when communicating.  Instead of approving of the way I wrote the letter, I was criticized for not making our senior leader sound smart enough.

The chief receiving that letter would not care about how “smart” the recommender was.  He would want to hear about the character, attitude, beliefs, leadership and policing tactics of the individual applying.  That’s what we needed to lay out in the letter, and ultimately it was not the path we took.

I don’t know if the guy got the job.  I did learn that people sometimes write letters that are inappropriate to the audience.  Don’t let that be you.