By Dana P Skopal, PhD

A great deal of writing is done at work – be it for a business or a large government institution.  So plan to get your message across without drowning in words.

Let’s view ‘business’ here in its broadest sense – like a commercial enterprise or operating a service. Business writing becomes a broad description of producing many different documents.

However, a document is only good if a reader can understand what to do with the information. Business writing involves the right mix of information clearly expressed in a logical order that the reader can follow.

Recently, organisations seem to be moving away from an order of: background, details, findings, recommendation. Most managers want to read the recommendation, so we now see: recommendation, key details and rationale for decision, with other information being placed in appendices or on an intranet.

The order of background to recommendation invariably comes from the academic order of introduction, body and conclusion. This order links to the persuasive adage of: tell them what you are going to talk about, cover the details of your topic, and finally tell them again what you have just told them. Now that we work in a world of information overload, this information order rarely works.

As a manager wants to know what next steps you are recommending, how do you summarise your key information into one or two pages? Imagine that you only have two minutes to get your message across and record yourself on your mobile phone. If you know your stuff, you can put an effective argument together when you are not bogged down looking at the words on the computer screen. Effective business writing involves planning and thinking – give recording a ‘summary’ a go. I use this option in many workshops and am amazed at the results.

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