I’m back, intermittently. Here is the first part of what will, with luck, be a three-part series on “professional writing.”
I’m advised to add a disclaimer: that the following is derived from experience with American and Americanized executives, and therefore may not be applicable beyond that context.
I spend a not-insubstantial amount of time writing for, and presenting to, corporate and executive leadership. The principles underlying this type of writing aren’t complicated, mainly because executives are just people, albeit people with far less patience and bandwidth than most, operating in a milieu that has some fairly specific communication expectations.
I’m going to try to spell out some principles I’ve absorbed about writing for executives. They’re applicable across genres, formats, and contexts. These principles are useful even if you’re not writing for executives—because expressing oneself clearly (and getting what one wants out of an interaction) are skills that can be applied everywhere in life, with anyone.
Determine what you want
Decide what you’re saying
Decide how you’re saying what you’re saying
Lead with the point
Situation, Complication, Resolution
Rule of Three
Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive (MECE)
Tell AND Show
Omit unnecessary words
Don’t over-framework
Write the executive summary last
Determine what you want
You are one of literally hundreds of people who want an executive’s attention at any given minute of the business day. The best way to get what you want is to have some empathy and respect for your audience by using their time wisely. Know what you want, and then ask for it, clearly and concisely.
The primary purpose of an executive is to make decisions. If you are interacting with an executive, chances are you need to do one of three things: inform the executive of something, extract information from the executive, or get the executive to make a decision.
Write down what you want from the executive in a single sentence. If you’re informing the executive of something, also write down why that thing is happening, and what you intend to do about that thing. If you’re asking for something, also write down why you want it, why they should care, and what you intend to do with it. If you need a decision, articulate both the decision that needs to be made, and why it needs to be made. Then, write down the outcome you want from your executive.
Now, put all of the above aside. You will say (or write) none of the above to the executive.
Instead:
Decide what you’re saying
Now, write down what you will actually say to the executive. Be as concise as you can. Bullet points are fine. Some people use the dotdash1 approach. Other people “write the headlines.” Do what works for you.
Then, whittle this down to the absolute shortest, most brief version of what you want to say that still gets your point, and information, across. Remember: for those with limited time, concision plus precision equals respect. Consider that you are “optimizing for time.”
Even better if you can make it three key points, as threes are deft way of structuring writing (more on this shortly).
This does not have to be well written, or even cogent. Because next, you will:
Decide how you’re saying what you’re saying
To get what you want (or “to have maximum impact”), you need to consider a tricky, imprecise, yet critical dimension: how you position what you’re saying.
A sidebar: it is a truth exhaustingly gestured-toward that, in corporate contexts, one wants to make one’s boss (or executive) look good. The inverse is also true: one does not want to make one’s boss (or executive) look bad. Another truth: what’s appropriate communication between two colleagues is not appropriate communication in the boardroom. In the executive arena, new dynamics obtain: what is “frank” or “direct” or “real” can also, too easily, be perceived as “negative” or “inflammatory” or “alarming.” What may be tolerated in good times as a “idiosyncratic” or “unique” or “refreshing” communication style can suddenly be perceived, in times of crisis, as “unhelpful” or “uncooperative” or “radioactive.” This is because a style that is overly direct can be conflated with accusation; that is, with placing undue expectation and obligation on it’s interlocutor. Managerial structures tend to push detail downward and reward timely resolution of difficulty by junior managers,2 and executives tend to dislike feeling blamed or complained-to by someone whose job it is to fix the problem.
A further sidebar: rhetoric is the art of exerting an effect on an audience. I quote:3
Let it be said, first of all, that rhetoric is an inescapable activity in our lives. Every day, we either use rhetoric or are exposed to it. Everyone living in community with other people is inevitably a rhetorician. A parent constantly uses rhetoric on a child; a teacher, on his or her students; a salesperson, on customers; a supervisor, on workers. During every half hour that we spend in front of a television set, we are subjected three or four times to somebody's efforts to get us to buy something. During election time, we are bombarded by candidates' appeals for our vote. Even when we are driving on the streets and highways, our eyes are constantly assaulted by sales pitches on huge billboards.
One may feel that, by paying so much attention to positioning, one is being scheming, calculating, even devious—taking advantage of one’s audience to hammer home one’s particular view of the facts, to the detriment of the objective “truth.” One may calm down and rest in the reassurance that, by carefully choosing one’s words and framing, one is merely putting language to it’s best, and arguably highest, purpose. If you truly have qualms about being perceived as manipulative, I say: grow up.
Back to writing. Executives are sensitive: they appreciate precision, yet at the same time are dowsing rods for bullshit. You need to be direct yet diplomatic. Do not sugarcoat, but do not be unnecessarily negative either. Excess, of rhetoric or otherwise, can damage your credibility and diminish the trust your executive has in you.
Draft:
“Our investors are skeptical and think we're idiots who don’t know what we’re doing.”
Revision:
“Our investors are curious to learn more about our strategy and our implementation plans. Sharing more about our experience will help them understand our approach.”
You may also discover a funny secret of extreme language: vehemence obscures imprecision.
Draft:
“Our customers hate our product.”
Revision:
“Our customers don’t complete transactions because of high site latency, return our product in an average of two days, and when asked do not refer us to others.”
Two things. One, imprecision is lethal: push to know what you mean, and say it neatly. Two, rhetorically speaking, you want to reframe what you want to say to be, if not positive, then at least neutral. This is not “dissembling” or “disguising” or “lying.” Executives are not stupid: if you give them bad news, they will see it is bad, no matter how diplomatically you deliver it. The art is in the “how.” If you deliver bad news histrionically, you are undermining your credibility, creating distraction, and calling attention to yourself unnecessarily. By infusing emotional or hyperbolic language into these contexts, you also risk being seen as manipulative. But, if you deliver bad news precisely and neutrally, you are a professional.
One day I’ll write a glossary. For now, here are a few repositioned favorites:
Negative / Positive
Skeptical / Curious
Problems / Challenges
Defiant / Courageous
Afraid / Thoughtful
In any kind of writing, structure is how you’re built, style is how you sound, and composition is how you make it happen. Here are a few notes on structure:
Lead with the point
Begin with a cleaned up, brief statement of what you need.
We’re here to talk about the quarterly results.
I’d like to update you on our overall progress. Then, I’d like to get your thoughts on two questions in our proposal.
I’d like you to weigh in on both our strategic recommendation, and on a draft of the email to the CFO.
Using people’s time wisely is a gesture of respect. Using as little of their time as you need to get what you need is even better.
Situation, Complication, Resolution
This is an approach frequently used in consulting: state the situation, state the complication, and state the resolution. The situation should be rooted in facts and data, objective and ideally measurable. The complication describes the problem or the reason for action. The resolution is the proposed solution. This can be done in three sentences but it can also be done in one.
Airline ticket sales are down 31% over the last two quarters due to a spike in agoraphobia, likely resulting from the rise in ominous portents and the entry of Mars into retrograde at the start of Q1. We need to increase ticket sales to cover not only the loss of revenue from this period, but also to meet our annual targets. An atomic bomb set off in the upper atmosphere of Mars will redirect its orbit out of retrograde for the next 6,731 quarters, restoring ticket sales to baseline.
Our competitors are stealing market share, and our new product was late to launch, but our next product launch will recapture our market lead.
Rule of Three
The Aristotelian rule is as appealing to the listener as it is to the memory. Three is few enough to easily track as an audience, with enough dimension to cover substantive detail while remaining plausible to remember. Never one, never two, always three. (Well, sometimes two, if you know what you’re doing).
This, that, the other thing.
Yours, mine, and ours.
Body, soul, and mind.
Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive (MECE)
Another consulting tool, popularized by the consulting tools.4 Putting things into categories is a quick way to make sense of a large set of information; to make useful categories, one must ensure they are both mutually exclusive (i.e., that no one item can be in more than one category at a time) and collectively exhaustive (i.e., they exhaust all of the possibilities in the set). Yes, this device oversimplifies and omits the very real ambiguities inherent in many information sets; as a director of mine would say, “That’s what footnotes and the appendix are for.”
Age brackets: 18-24, 25-36, 37-45, 46-55, 55+
Birthplace: New York City; Amsterdam; Moscow
Dice rolls: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Tell AND Show
To be effective, you need to do both. The term “show, don’t tell” has proliferated widely as a blunt-force heuristic, but originates, allegedly, from a 1910 book by Arthur Edwin Krows,5 citing a playwright of his acquaintance:
On this day, he could talk of little else but a striking motto he had found, and which he had placed on the wall above his desk. The magic line was “Show—not tell.” “I’ve written number of scenes in which characters come in and tell about what happened outside,” he said; “but it’s wrong. The audience wants to see what’s going on. It shouldn’t have happened outside but right on the stage where everybody could see it.
Likewise, your executive needs to be shown; also, importantly, they need to be told what to think about what they are shown. So, what better way to tell your executive than with a picture of data, trends, visualizations, or something else that makes apparent what you are telling them; what better way to show them than to strip away anything unnecessary, except for the point. I often refer to these with affection as “brutalist charts.”
Some of the most effective investor relations presentations I’ve seen include bar charts with no labels: only bars of a single color, with the exception of a single brightly-colored bar labeled with the company’s logo. Absurd and offensively imprecise, yet effective. I attempt to reproduce a similar effect:
Executives are a skeptical bunch. They like to see things for themselves. Show them the “data,” and then tell them a slightly pithier version of the conclusion they may be coming to as they see it.
Omit unnecessary words
Don’t use ten when you can use five. Or five, when three will do.
Don’t over-framework
It’s tempting. Frameworks make one feel smart: they make complicated information easy to understand, they slot ideas neatly into place and, in templatizing thinking, can seem to write themselves. The most any one presentation, or document, can stand is one. Sometimes two, if you space them out.
This goes for most devices, by the way—metaphors, similes, or other stylistic flights, at least in a “corporate” context.
Write the executive summary last
The executive summary is a page, or a set of bullets, or a concise paragraph, summarizing the material you are presenting. It will be the first part of your document, and often the only part of your document the executive will read.
It’s best to write this once you’ve finished everything else. The process of writing the entire document (with “what you want to say” and “what you need” and “how you want to say it” in mind) will reveal to you what you are actually saying.
This is part one of three. The next two installments will focus on composition and on style.
A dotdash is just an outline, formatted in bullet points. The main ideas or headlines that drive your story are designated by “dots.” Supporting ideas, facts, and data are indented, and designated by dashes. That’s literally it.
With deep affection to Jackall’s Moral Mazes.
From Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, Third Edition
A note on consultants. They are indeed loathsome, with few redeeming qualities; however, the crisp communication patterns they practice as a function of synthesis and diligence, are one of the reasons behind their proliferation. The good ones, anyway.
Playwriting for Profit