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).

CQ, or collaborative intelligence, combines the ability to think well, and to think collaboratively with other people. It is a key to innovation, corporate earnings, individual wealth and national success in the 21st Century.

CQ is also a core factor in managing knowledge workers, nationally and internationally. High collaborative intelligence often includes skills for managing different generations, as different cohorts interact differently, share knowledge in different ways, and have differing ways of using technology.

CQ often has hard skills components too. These include the ability to write clearly and quickly, and to use communication technology easily and confidently. For instance, your business may have a very valuable,  knowledgeable, and highly-skilled thinker. This person might, however be a Boomer or older GenXer who is seriously under-performing simply because s/he lacks training and confidence in using in web conferencing or use of wikis, on-line project  management etc.

CQ and other ‘New Economy” skills developments are well-funded by local government programs in the Tampa Bay counties. CPS is ethically committed to help any company seeking funding for either “new” and “old” economy skills training or career retooling, whether CPS is a supplier of the training for the required skills or not. Please email glynis[@]c-psolutions or call me at 813-598-9184.

Lisa’s presentation focused on how the hard science of positive psychology research can help to create:
a. better thinking, judgment, deductive reasoning and creativity
b. durably strong personal and interpersonal climates.

She emphasized that some people still think of positive psychology as “fairy dust and rainbows”, instead of the science-based psychological equivalent of creating good physical health, and taking research-proven preventative measures to maintain it.

Positive mental states broaden and build performance, while negative mental states tighten and narrow functioning.

Lisa presented many studies showing how positive emotions and a sense of well-being create everything from better test performance, to greater creativity, responsiveness, better judgments, wider perspectives and better thinking.

One study made me resolve to stay away from miserable doctors. The results showed that positive doctors made significantly better diagnoses, with better thinking processes behind them.

This science applies to the 21st century wealth-creating organization. It shows how we have the hard science to create environments, attitudes and circumstances which lead to durable improvements in knowledge and intellectual resources. We can support better deductive and creative thought, and more expansive, tolerant and innovative people networks.

Visit the Center at <http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu> . Their many tests are free (we did the Signature Strengths Questionnaire) and could be great tools for team or individual learning activities.