The New Business Writing

"In the corporate world, your documents, emails, and instant messages become your personal brand."

"Only 6 to 7 percent of emails receive a response"  – Jack Appleman, from 10 Steps to Successful Business Writing


Food Writing for Business

There are hundreds of writing rules that we could absorb in order to improve upon the essence of the quotes above – that on one hand our writing becomes our brand, but that virtually nobody reads our brand.  There might be two distinct causes of this crisis of main stream writing. One is that attention spans have dwindled to such a degree that to place effort into what is perceived as a simple or silly email is, unfortunately, a waste of time. The loss of both patience and furthermore the ability actually expand thought as a consequence borders on tragic.  Another possibility is that we haven't quite captured a new writing potential for business, with new modes, new frameworks, and new interest. Statistics might not completely bear this out, but after teaching composition and other writing courses for ten years, and trying my own hand at daily writing in the blog form, there are a few things that I think I have uncovered when considering how writing might better match the evolving writing (or lack of) mindset. One is that contemporary business writing books still apprehend better writing through the well established fields of concern such as clarity, directness, accuracy, tone, proofreading, etc. These are given; there is really no such thing as extended prose that should have any plans for success without these. Yet it seems that what the contemporary mind craves has something more to do with varied interests. This is to say if we were conducting a college English composition class, we would want to make sure we work hard at the topic choice level, for when a student digs-in a bit in their chosen topic and realizes that they recognize a piece of themselves in the subject, many of the rest of the writing process takes care of itself. The chief reason why many of the essays I read to correct were successful or not? Topic choice, identification, vital interest. Once this is established, all of a sudden the need for good analysis and clarity become a matter of investment and credibility. A student chooses to find out more about sentence construction when they care whether their audience cares or not.  All of this translates to business in some finer ways, to be sure; at the end of the day, of course, business people have to write business reports and business emails. But how might we figure out ways in the workplace to gain investment in writing? I'm doubtful, but could be wrong, that the answer is harder and deeper analysis yet in the subject matter at hand, the business task at hand. Instead, we need to open new ways to see the business task, new ways to come to appreciate our own brand (voice) as it relates to our communication. My thesis would be that to create other, horizontal, modes of interest in the workplace could do the trick. I might call this Food Writing for Business, in which food might be thought of as a metaphor for any subject other than the mechanics of business. By studying M.F.K Fisher, the queen of food writing, we might open up pockets of shared interest within the workplace. Most people eat, many cook, and the mind tends to wander in this direction anyway throughout the day. Tonight's restaurant selection is a topic that might garner seventy-five percent of email response. Along the way, as we engage the process of cooking on our own, we invest ourselves in the eventual food writing. We share it. Our peers come to read other examples. We could, once we get used to the process, begin to consider more effective means of relaying food writing. Fisher always creates very effective leads. She often brings in fine anecdotes. Can an anecdote be effective. She brings in history. How about facts? How do we incorporate those? We may try to avoid her often sardonic tone so that we don't disturb the peace, but by avoiding it we come to understand it, and why it slips into some folks' emails all the time. The point is this: you can either teach business writing by doubling down on business itself, by taking the shovel to it, so to speak, or you can learn better business writing sideways, from another angle, using the skills gained by taking on a topic of personal interest and then eventually applying those very same skills and craft into your emails and reports. That night, at your favorite restaurant, you might open up the conversation with your significant other, by telling a business story, then asking whether it was well told, and why.