Write It Well

Write It Well, a Bay Area-based training and consulting company that helps people improve their business writing skills, has just published a new edition of its popular book about writing for business. Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide now includes expanded sections on e-mail, grammar, and punctuation. The book addresses a fundamental yet largely overlooked skill in every career level of business: how to write business letters, e-mail, and other documents that communicate clearly and effectively. Poorly written documents can sabotage careers, threaten productivity, and negatively affect a company’s image, while effective written communication increases productivity and improves the workplace environment.

Employers should take note. A Write It Well survey found that nearly 75 percent of people think that they could make better use of their writing time. Wasted time affects a company’s overall productivity. In today’s increasingly global economy, companies rely on written documents and e-mail to allow large teams to work together efficiently across time zones. Poorly written documents and e-mail can be detrimental to a project’s results and deteriorate team dynamics, both of which directly affect a company’s bottom line.

“It’s very important to write clearly, concisely, and professionally if you want to be competitive in today’s business environment,” says Amanda Noguera, Regional Sales Director, AVOKE Caller Experience Analytics, BBN Technologies.

Even with so much at stake, more professionals are entering the workforce without the ability to express themselves clearly in writing. According to The National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges, more and more schools and colleges today neglect to teach students the essentials of writing. As a result, many college graduates enter the workforce with poor writing skills. Yet writing is a fundamental business skill. In fact, a recent survey by the Commission found that half of all companies assess writing abilities during the hiring process and promotion decisions.

The solution is for companies to invest in business writing skills. “Most of our employees – engineers, developers, product managers, marketing staff – were never taught how to write professionally; they were just thrown into it,” says Jocelyn King, Director, Worldwide Marketing Operations, National Semiconductor Corporation. “Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide offers people what they need to get their point across clearly and present a professional image of themselves and of our corporation in everything they write.”

Designed for use by individuals, teams, or as part of classroom training, Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide is a cost-effective and flexible solution. “The book’s for anyone, really. It answers many of our everyday writing questions in simple language without getting bogged down with daunting grammar and style rules. And it offers clear plans of action for those who might get overwhelmed by the writing process,” says Michelle Meyers, Associate Editor, CNET News.

Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide, ISBN 9780982447116, will be available at Amazon.com and bookstores nationwide for $37.00. Visit www.writeitwell.com for more information about Write It Well’s books, on-site training, webinars, and facilitator guides.

About the Author

Natasha Terk is the author of Writing Performance Reviews: A Write It Well Guide and the coauthor of E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide. As the president of Write It Well, she leads the firm’s business operations and strategy. Natasha holds master’s degrees from the University of San Francisco and the University of Manchester, UK. She served as a program officer at the Packard Foundation, as a management consultant with La Piana Consulting, and taught business writing at the University of California–Berkeley.

Natasha gives keynote speeches and presentations on business communications at seminars and large conferences. She develops job-relevant, engaging training solutions that help people work more effectively and efficiently.

About Write It Well

Write It Well is a woman-owned training and consulting company that helps people in the workplace communicate clearly and work together effectively. Write It Well offers step-by-step techniques to improve business writing through on-site and online training courses, as well as business writing books with companion facilitator guides including Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide, E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide, Writing Performance Reviews: A Write It Well Guide, How to Write Reports and Proposals, and Grammar for Grownups. Visit www.writeitwell.com for more information.

A press release, Write It Well Keeps Companies Out of Trouble by Developing Criteria for Effective Performance Reviews, is available online here.

Does it take you a long time to write performance reviews? Do the reviews that you write clearly describe what employees need to improve and the strengths they can continue to build? Do you know the criteria for acceptable performance documentation?

Write It Well’s new book, Writing Performance Reviews:  A Write It Well Guide, will help you write performance objectives, reviews, appraisals, and other performance documentation that is clear, descriptive, objective, and acceptable in today’s workplace.  Full of job-relevant examples and activities, this lively and engaging book will give you the tools you need to efficiently write better performance reviews.

We also have onsite training, online training, and facilitator kits ready for you to roll out to help employees complete end-of-year reviews.

Author: Natasha Terk

ISBN: 978-0-9824471-0-9

Price: $24.99

Publication date: December, 2009

Chapter Summaries:

Lesson 1: Writing performance objectives and standards

If performance objectives are specific, measurable, actionable, reasonable, and include a timeframe, then employees know how to meet their job requirements.   This lesson offers examples, activities, tips, and tools for writing performance objectives that encourage optimal performance.

Lesson 2: Criteria for acceptable performance reviews

Performance reviews should describe behaviors and results.  Keep yourself out of trouble by following some basic legal guidelines.  This lesson offers opportunities to identify the reviews that follow the criteria and those that do not.

Lesson 3: Using descriptive language

An evaluation of a person’s performance must be based on observations of behavior and results of performance.  This lesson highlights the difference between reviews that feature observations and results and those that are based on impressions, opinions, or assumptions.

Lesson 4: Explaining and supporting evaluations and decisions

Your evaluations and recommendations must be based on facts.  This lesson provides strategies for making sure that you’ve backed up what you say in a review.

Lesson 5: Writing descriptions that are specific and complete

A description is only useful if the details it includes answers all the readers’ questions.  This lesson offers exercises and activities to make sure that your review doesn’t leave the reader confused or create any misunderstandings.

With Write It Well’s facilitator materials, you can deliver the workshop yourself!  For less than $20 per person per day, you can deliver an excellent workshop (and wow your boss). Reduced printing costs have allowed us to discount the prices on our popular facilitator kits (Effective E-Mail and Business Writing).

Andrew Ross, San Francisco Chronicle reporter, likes our honesty and willingness to own our own writing mistakes.  He wrote…

We received the following “retraction” from Write It Well, an Oakland company that “improves business communications skills.”    One of your colleagues alerted us to the fact that there are three typos in the press release we sent you earlier. For a company that earns its keep by teaching others to communicate clearly and professionally, this is pretty embarrassing. But as we tell the people we train: Everyone makes mistakes; own them and do better next time.”     A lesson there for all of us.

Worried about how you’ll help managers deliver effective layoff interviews?  Write It Well has an online learning application that will solve your problem. 

(PR Web, Oakland, CA – February 9, 2008) – Write It Well, a training and publishing company that improves business communications skills, has an online training solution for managers who are tasked with the difficult job of laying people off. The Los Angeles Times reported last week that nearly a quarter-of-a- million layoffs were announced in January. In these economic times, layoffs are a sad reality. They are difficult for everyone involved – certainly for those losing their jobs, but also for the managers delivering the bad news and the staff left behind.

In last week’s article, “Layoffs Herald a Heyday for Employee Lawsuits,” The New York Times reported that the number of lawsuits filed by laid-off workers is rising steadily. Layoff interviews conducted well can reduce the risks of legal action and slipping employee morale. Write It Well’s customizable application gives managers the tools and confidence they need to conduct layoff interviews effectively.

When Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang got to work writing an e-mail about layoffs, he made some serious blunders. This is a topic that affects people at a visceral level and warrants a professional e-mail with correct grammar and punctuation. Yang’s confusing, rambling, error-filled message delivered the opposite impression. Ironically, Yahoo!’s own written guidelines for layoffs are right on the mark: get right to the point, don’t own the employee’s feelings, and be clear, concise, and respectful.

 Nobody likes to write difficult e-mails or deliver bad news, but when they learn how to do it right, managers can deliver bad news respectfully and effectively.

Drawing on more than twenty-five years of experience helping people communicate clearly and professionally, Write It Well has developed a training solution that teaches managers why layoff interviews are so challenging to deliver and how to avoid some of the most common pitfalls. By watching excerpts from layoff interviews, they get to see the dos and don’ts in action. Following these excerpts, the solution’s facilitator offers a brief analysis of why each interview was successful or not, emphasizing the risks inherent in poorly chosen words, poor delivery and lack off preparation.

Interviews are unsuccessful when managers are not prepared (e.g., working without a script, failing to prepare documents about severance or COBRA), deliver the news poorly (e.g., with too much emotional content in the interview) and a fail to document the interview immediately afterward. By completing the exercises in the training program, managers will learn the three steps necessary for success: 1. Prepare, 2. Deliver, and 3. Document.

About Write It Well

Write It Well is a training and consulting firm that helps people in the workplace communicate clearly and work together effectively. Write It Well offers step-by-step techniques to improve business communication through onsite and online training courses, e-learning solutions, blended solutions, and business writing books with companion facilitator guides. Our books include Professional Writing Skills, How to Write Reports and Proposals, Grammar for Grownups, and E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide. For more information about Write It Well, visit our website.

Our e-learning solution, How to Conduct a Layoff Interview, can be customized for any organization and stored inside your firewall. In most cases, delivery only takes three weeks from the date of order.

Write It Well developed a customized blended learning program for Berkeley, CA-based low-income housing developer, Satellite Housing.  Read about the project and outcomes here.

Write It Well delivered a pair of e-mail writing workshops at Leadership Public High School in Richmond on Tuesday, December 2, 2008. In this era of high speed electronic communication and high-profile e-mail misfires, e-mail messages are in the spotlight. The workshops were designed to help high school seniors improve the quality of their e-mail messages and learn what’s appropriate as they prepare for college applications, summer jobs and internships, and the demands of the business world.

More people are entering the workforce without the ability to express themselves clearly in writing. According to The National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges, schools and colleges today neglect writing and, as a result, many college graduates enter the workforce with poor writing skills. Yet, writing – and e-mail writing – is a fundamental business skill. In fact, a recent survey by the Commission found that half of all companies assess writing skills during the hiring process and when making promotion decisions.

Poorly written e-mail can sabotage job prospects while effective e-mail opens doors. “People often enter the workforce without an understanding of what it means to communicate professionally. College applicants can really set themselves apart with a basic knowledge of what’s appropriate and effective in e-mail communication,” says Preston Lewis, Director of Talent, Bonfire Communications.

Leadership Public High School serves grades 9 through 12 in Richmond, CA . The school offers college preparatory curriculum in a small and safe learning environment. “This is not something I’d know how to teach so it’s really nice to have someone come in and teach it to our students,” says Andy Hatcher, 12th Grade English Teacher, Leadership Public High School.

To conduct the training, Write It Well donated copies of its bestselling book, E-Mail – A Write It Well Guide: How to Write and Manage E-Mail in the Workplace. “This book should be required reading,” comments David Krane, Director of Corporate Communications for Google, Inc.

The ability to write an effective e-mail is also essential for landing a job. “Excellent communication skills are universally appreciated in business, and in many cases it’s a core requirement for candidates. Well-constructed, thoughtful and professionally written emails make a powerful first impression, and will often set a candidate apart from the rest of the pack.” Sharon Kittredje, Managing Partner, HIRE Talent Management Solutions, Inc.

“Quality counts,” says Kevin Hoover, Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Duke University. “E-mail has greatly expanded the range of student-faculty interactions and of collaborations among students. When students write clear, crisp, organized, and polite messages, e-mail enriches learning. Sadly, too often poorly written e-mail inhibits useful communications and undermines learning.”

E-mail has become the primary method of business communication, surpassing the telephone as our preferred communication tool in the workplace (Datamonitor report, September 2007). While most people already sense that this is the case, most of us don’t stop to consider the implications for our careers. “While most of us understand that poorly written e-mail can waste time, we forget that poorly written e-mail can also create costly misunderstandings, catapult deadlines, delay deliverables, impact people’s opinion of you, and sabotage your career,” says Natasha Terk, president of Write It Well.    

According to Xobni, a San Francisco-based start-up that has developed an Outlook add-on to help manage e-mail, by 2009, workers are expected to spend 40 percent of their time writing and managing e-mail. It’s an important skill to hone since poorly written can be embarrassing. In fact, in a recent Write It Well survey, a whopping eighty-eight percent of respondents said that poorly written e-mail messages leave a poor impression of not only the writer, but the writer’s organization as well.

We are pleased to announce that our two-day course, Business Writing, has been approved for CEU credits.  Read more about how Write It Well can deliver a two-day business writing workshop that gets results.