1: The business case for writing skills:

You achieve many results by writing. Your team works through text. You hate meetings and you probably can’t reach people by phone without playing telephone tag.  They are on another floor, in another building, across the city, state or planet.

Text, text, text: the information is on the server. The report’s on the ftp. See the attached pdf. Log on the the LMS. See your  email dated….

So many people skim-read, while multi-tasking. We’re swimming in a world of information, and  everyone is doing more with less.

21st Century reading and writing carries the main burden to achieve key business results. These include:

• Communicating clear, complete and accurate information, or other messages, in the Age of Complexity.
• Eliciting responses (e.g. encouraging replies with complete and accurate information, or getting cooperative, motivated assistance).
• Driving action (delivering correct actions, in the right time frame, in the right way).
• Building relationships, understanding and trust (often with people you may never meet).
• Building and supporting ongoing collaboration, teamwork, and  interactive thinking.

Even senior business people need to review their skills for these tasks. People with graduate degrees often find training in 21st Century writing as helpful as those who see themselves as ‘weaker writers’.

2. The immediately-measurable cost benefits of writing skills:  (a numbers-based approach)

Imagine that your junior-level staff member writes a couple of emails more quickly. Saving: about $600 in a 282-day year.

What if your junior-level staff member, who earns $35,000 per year, and writes many emails each day, improves his/her writing skills noticeably?  The cost benefits multiply. The time saving is now several thousand dollars a year, both in time saved, and because his/her effective writing also helps create effective communication in our text-based business system. Results include more productive processes, efficient projects, happier customers and better teamwork.

If a senior manager writes just a couple of emails more quickly each day, the simple time-saving payoff moves up to about $3,000 each year. If his/her writing skills improve, and s/he spends a significant time writing, the time pay-off for the improvement can reach 45 minutes a day. The time can be costed as annual salary, divided by 1000, x282. (S/he spends 2000 hours at work a year; cost to company of time = salary + benefits + office etc = annual salary divided by 1000.)

The bottom-line cost of management writing skills is far-reaching. It is almost impossible to put a price on the benefits of senior managers writing clear, persuasive, effective communications, as these are so valuable in an economy where customers, suppliers and knowledge workers communicate in text.

Other writing workshops:

Other CPS writing workshops include:

1. Communicating Across Distances and Differences, a workshop that specifically benefits international business people, or those who work in multi-cultural or distance situations.
2. Custom writing programs, to meet specific client needs. These may include corporate-specific reporting, writing for multiple-level audiences, presentation writing etc.

HR gurus repeatedly stress that written communication skills are a common key to job and organization success, and that these skills are becoming more and more important in a knowledge-based, text-based and global economy.

CPS staffers have succeeded with very large thinking-and-writing skills projects, that have saved companies many thousands of hours each year. Clients include Volkswagen, BMW, Ernst & Young, Coca-Cola, Sweetbay, Ceridian Benefits, and company-wide transformations for companies like Iscor and Sasol (the giant South African steel and oil-from-coal industries).

Stop apologizing for spelling, and start using your strengths (i.e. thinking). You need some work-arounds if you are not a natural speller.  These include using spellcheck (always), building and using a homophone chart, and enjoying collaborative writing. A friendly proof-reader/copy-editor is very useful for customer-facing documents. The internet also has many editing sites that provide copy-editing for big and small companies, at very affordable rates, and they give you results within hours.

Second-language English users have several other options.  For ordinary correspondence,  simply write “I am writing in my second (or third, fourth etc) language,” early on in an email. We are a global community, working to communicate across distances and differentness, and people understand if your writing is not perfect.

Translation sites like Bablefish do not produce good English. However these sites are very helpful if your spelling is weak in your second language. Write your letter in very short ‘active’ sentences in your first language: subject, verb, object. Then clip and paste the English text into your document, and you can use this as a basis for your writing.

Create a homophone chart. Here are some ideas to start with. Here is a funny version. Edit it to suit your own problem words, and change it as you master some words, or find others that give you problems. Change the simple definitions if they do not work for you. Avoid the grammar-police-types if they try to make your chart complicated: these are the people who like to  explain things like ‘how affect can occasionally be a noun’. Don’t make your list too long – you don’t need words like wretch or leech, which you will never use in your business career.

accept – to take graciously. I accepted the gift.
except – not including. He ate it all, except for the spicy chillis.

affect – a verb. It affected me really badly.
effect – a noun. It had a very bad effect on me.

a lot – the opposite of a little.
allot – to allocate, e.g. an allotment, a lottery.
alot  – there is no such word.

all together -   everyone at once. The choir master managed to get the choir to sing all together.
altogether -  completely, everything considered. Altogether, I’m just glad it’s over.

all right -  everything correct. He got it all right.
alright – okay, adequate. I’m feeling alright today.

brake – a device to slow down a  vehicle, or keep it still.
break – to damage so that it is broken.

course – a path of study, or of a stream, or walk.
coarse – rough, abrasive.

every day – each day. She worked out at the gym every day.
everyday – ordinary – an adjective. She wore her everyday clothes.

forth – onwards. The army went forth to battle.
fourth – numerical order. She was the fourth child.

hear -to perceive with your ears or auditory sense.
here – where we are, not over there.

it’s – a contraction of it is. It’s really hot today, isn’t it?
its – belonging to it. The cupboard has a scratch in its veneer.

loose – not tight. The dog’s collar is loose.
lose – the opposite of win. I hope my team doesn’t  lose today.

manner – a way of doing something. He stalked out in an irate manner.
manor – a big house on a large piece of land. She behaved as if to the manor born!

personal – affecting a particular person.
personnel – the Human Resources Department.

principle – related to abstract values.
principal – the main or most important person, or issue e.g. he invested the principal and lived on the interest.

quite – relatively, it is quite cold today.
quiet – the opposite of noisy,

rain – water falling from the sky
reign – to rule (can be a verb or a noun)
rein – straps used to control a horse. We must rein in spending.

stationery – paper and envelopes.
stationary – standing still.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and strengths.
SWAT team – those scary guys in black who use special weapons and tactics.

there – not here.
their – it belongs to them.
they’re – a contraction of they are. They’re late again.

wear – to put on your body as clothes or accessories. I am wearing my favorite t-shirt.
where – referring to place. Where are you? I can’t remember where I put my keys.

yea – an old (archaic) form of yes, used when taking a vote. “The nays have it. There were only three yeas.
yay – an exclamation of enjoyment or pleasure.

You can guess a client’s or remote colleague’s generation from their writing, and give them appropriate service or packaged data.

Mature/Traditional: No emoticons. The writer thinks smiley faces are unprofessional and signs of lazy writing. You’ll tend to see longer, more complex sentences, and spelling is really good. Paragraphing is usually excellent, with careful punctuation.

Boomer: A few emoticons. The writer thinks that emoticons solve the time-consuming problems of conveying tone in text, and prevent costly misunderstandings. Homophones are correct. Their/there is always right, but sometimes insure/assure/ensure are confused, as are effect/affect. Apostrophes are usually correct.

GenXer: Quite a lot of emoticons, but none in formal documents like reports, resumés etc. The writer sees emoticons as valuable communication devices in a world of global communication, second language users, and lots of quick written messages. The classic GenX error is that the opposite of “a little” is “alot” instead of “a lot”. This generation may muddle homophones: break/ brake, aloud/allowed, bored/board, or even flower and flour.

GenY/Millennial. The writer considers emoticons part of punctuation. Smiley faces, hearts and creative symbols clarify the writer’s intentions. Text message abbreviations appear, sometimes with all-lower case letters. Another common sight is text without paragraphing. Your and you’re may be used interchangeably. GenYs may not know how to set out a snail-mail business letter, or even a business envelope.

These are, of course, merely general pointers. Some matures can’t string a sentence together, and many Millennials write and edit with an elegance and precision I envy.