Write It Well

Write It Well’s June business writing newsletter is all about writing performance objectives the SMART way is up on our site.  Here is a preview:

Determining performance objectives is the same challenge as setting clear expectations. If your objectives are clear, then your evaluation process will also be clear.

To be useful, most performance objectives should meet the five following SMART criteria by being …

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Time-bound

Here are some performance objectives that fail to meet the SMART criteria:

• Become familiar with the Department’s Internet Usage Policy.
• Learn the records management system.
• Be able to balance client accounts.
• Be able to prepare audit reports.

And here are some before-and-after examples of ways you could rewrite those four problematic objectives to meet the SMART criteria:

• Become familiar with the Department’s Internet Usage Policy.
• Read the Department’s Internet Usage Policy by May 17th. Be able to answer 10 out of 10 questions correctly when tested.

• Learn the records management system.
• Attend a records management class and practice using the records management system with the assistance of an experienced coworker. Given a set of records two weeks after the class, be able to store them appropriately without assistance and with no more than three errors.

• Be able to balance client accounts.
• With little or no supervision or coworker assistance, be able to balance client accounts within the time specified by your supervisor.

• Be able to prepare audit reports.
• Prepare audit reports that meet the guidelines in the Audit Report Manual. Complete assigned reports without error by 4 p.m. every first and third Thursday.

A friend of mine works for a multinational high-tech corporation.  He was in Singapore on business last week and said that he’d developed a presentation that explained —very clearly and concisely — the  project he was working on.

“Everyone read it and understood it right away,” he said. “The problem, though, was that since it made perfect sense — in plain English — after the very first read, my colleagues thought that it needed ‘more.’  They all went to work adding chunks of worthless information. By the end,” my friend said, “it was full of unnecessary information and dead wood.”  It was a “hundred-ton brick of nothing.”

The next time you read something and understand it on the first read, tip your hat to the author. He or she worked hard to eliminate unnecessary information. As we say at Write It Well, “Impress people by communicating clearly and concisely, not by using unnecessary information or big words.”

As my friend said, “The bottom line is that understandable is OK.”

In fact, “understandable” is exactly what you want, every time.

Write It Well has been delivering workshops, webinars, and individual coaching programs in Asia for almost one year, and we’ve learned a great deal.  Most importantly, we know that business writing in the US does not equal business writing in Asia.

For example,

• In Asia, business writers rarely use semicolons.
• In Asia, business writers do not use the serial comma.
• In Singapore, writers use the word “revert” when they are asking for a response (e.g., “I will revert tomorrow”).

In our training programs, we help writers really understand their audiences and speak to their interests and concerns. We do that too!  Look for Asia-focused versions of our books and training materials at the end of this summer.

Write It Well client Saima Siddiqui is the Senior Associate Director of Career Services at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Saima says that after Write It Well’s e-mail training, she noticed a big difference in the quality of e-mail that flies around the office at NUS. “There are no more big chunks of text; people use more bullet points,” she says.  ”The e-mail subject lines are better, too: people are changing them when the subject changes. I love that!”

We do too. Changing the subject line when a topic changes in an e-mail thread is a great way to help many readers understand exactly what they need to understand. It’s just one of the tips Write It Well shares in our trainings to help overworked businesspeople stay on top of the oceans of reading and writing they have to do for work.

Written communication is as important to many jobs as technical knowledge and leadership skills. Whatever your field is, you often have to demonstrate solid writing skills before you can persuade hiring managers that your full range of abilities will benefit their organizations.

Problematic writing in a cover letter or resume can sabotage your chances of being interviewed for a job, so we recently wrote an entire book with strategies just for these crucial job-application documents.

Many people find these documents stressful to write, and we thought we’d share some of our tips and tools with you here. It is possible to tailor resumes and cover letters both to an individual organization’s hiring needs and to your own unique professional history.

Several recruiters and career specialists told us that a resume often receives only 20 seconds of a hiring manager’s attention. Here are some tips for writing resumes that get readers’ attention in that very short time frame:

• Use active language and clear, specific, plain English
• Make sure you maintain parallel list structure as you list past experiences (e.g., by starting all a list’s items with verbs that end in -ed)
• Proofread carefully to avoid an impression of carelessness and project a reliable image instead

And here’s a process that helps a job applicant write more impressive descriptions of past experience:

1. Read the job description carefully, and identify the kinds of routine problems you’ll solve if you’re hired at the organization.
2. Think of a time you faced a similar problem at a previous job.
3. Describe the problem, the action you took to solve it, and the beneficial result you achieved for your past employer.
4. Tell that problem-action-result story as concisely as possible.

A typical resume item representing Step 4 is “[Performed task X] [in response to challenge Y], [achieving beneficial result Z].” A problem or challenge can be as simple as meeting a tight deadline or satisfying a client or manager.

Quantifiable results stand out in a resume — e.g., “Streamlined a customer support process to eliminate delays in response times, boosting the customer retention rate by 10%.”

Remember that your resume and cover letter are your most important marketing tools. Solid planning can help you showcase your analytical and communication skills.

With careful writing, your writing can become a powerful marketing tool. Write It Well’s techniques can help you turn your resumes and cover letters into a concise, effective pitch for your professional abilities.

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Look for our forthcoming print book, e-book, iPad folio, and e-learning module on resumes and cover letters!

Bulleted lists are an excellent way to present complex business information clearly. Numbered items are better than bulleted items when you need to present an intricate sequence of steps.

This New York Times paragraph is a perfect example of information that cries out for a numbered list; just compare it to the reformatted version below.

Original

If you’re a business owner, a team coach or a performer who wants to keep everyone on Facebook apprised of your coming events, simply creating separate Facebook events for each one can be ineffective. These can get lost in the stream of events, making it hard for people to check for, say, your next game. As an alternative, use the Social Calendar app, which was not developed by Facebook. Go to facebook.com/SocialCalendar and click the Add to My Page link in the lower left corner. That will pop up a menu of pages you manage. Click Add to Page next to one or more pages, then click Close. Those pages will now include a Calendar link in their upper left corner, just below Wall, Info and Photos. Social Calendar is pretty smart — it will autocomplete the names of events you’ve already created, and if you type in an Address field, it will add a map link to the location on the calendar.

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Revised

If you’re a business owner, a team coach or a performer who wants to keep everyone on Facebook apprised of your coming events, simply creating separate Facebook events for each one can be ineffective. These can get lost in the stream of events, making it hard for people to check for, say, your next game. As an alternative, use the Social Calendar app, which was not developed by Facebook:

1. Go to facebook.com/SocialCalendar.

2. Click the Add to My Page link in the lower left corner. That will pop up a menu of pages you manage.

3. Click Add to Page next to one or more pages.

4. Then click Close.

Those pages will now include a Calendar link in their upper left corner, just below Wall, Info and Photos. Social Calendar is pretty smart — it will autocomplete the names of events you’ve already created, and if you type in an Address field, it will add a map link to the location on the calendar.

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In the original paragraph, the instructions are buried in a dense block of text, making it easy for readers to get confused or lost. The numbered list makes a clear sequence of steps stand out immediately.

Customers and clients can appreciate the clear guidance you offer in a chronologically numbered list. A little document planning on your part can boost their relief at your offering hassle-free, well-organized information.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two chapters on punctuation as well as tips for formatting a bulleted or numbered list. We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

Do you have an important document but not enough time to clarify your thoughts and double-check your punctuation and grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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Dashes and parentheses have opposite effects. Parentheses de-emphasize information, while dashes call attention to it. Click here for our April newsletter, which explains how you can use both kinds of punctuation mark confidently.

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Write It Well’s newly updated book Essential Grammar includes a clear chapter on comma usage and another chapter on correct uses for colons, semicolons, hyphens, parentheses, and dashes. The book is a thorough review of the fundamental grammar you need to project a credible, professional image through your writing. It also includes nuances of punctuation and grammar that help writing stand out for its polish and precision.

Just in case you missed it, our March newsletter offered tips and tools for writing effective press releases!

We could write a long introduction about why we liked this article but thought instead that we’d keep it short.  Here it is:  Tips for Writing Less!