Writing is More Than Mechanics > Dean Betty Vandenbosch

In our efforts to ensure that our students become good writers, we can be tempted to focus on grammar and punctuation at the expense of clarity and focus. When writers spend time organizing themselves before they begin, the impact of their writing can be much more powerful. Good business writers consider the audience, the structure of their argument, and the story that will make their argument compelling, as well as mechanics and style.

Focus on Audience Needs:  The purpose of any communication is to elicit a response. The writer’s task is to create the right message motivating her audience to respond or take action. Every business communication is really a project in microcosm. The writer needs to understand the situation, develop an objective and determine the best way to meet it, given the situation. Additionally, in business writing, brevity is crucial. The writer has no choice but to engage the audience in the first few sentences. More may never be read.

When an audience is supportive, they may be more interested in how than why. In this case, the writer should move from conclusions to the elements of the solution. There is no point going into laborious detail and supporting data if everyone is ready to move forward.

While writers often find it tempting to start with some incontrovertible facts leading up to findings and then conclusions, the structure of a report is much easier to follow if it begins with the conclusions and works back to the findings and data. If it starts with data or findings, people have no context in which to place them, they don’t know why they’re important, they can’t remember them, and they get very bored by their recitation. If it starts with conclusions, the audience can decide whether or not the findings support them and whether or not to pay attention based on their level of agreement with the conclusions themselves.  Focusing our students on their audiences and making those audiences as concrete as possible will make the task of deciding how to begin much easier.

Structure the Message:  The structure of a business report should be such that it shows the logic used to arrive at each conclusion in turn. There are only two ways to provide support: deductively and inductively. A deductive argument starts with a position and builds on it to reach a conclusion. A summary statement that incorporates the conclusion is used to introduce the argument. The figure below provides an example.

The argument above may be enough for an audience that already agrees with the three deductive points. However, more commonly, the audience is interested in support for each finding. An inductive argument is based on the preponderance of the evidence rather than a logical argument. Inductive arguments present specific details in support of the overall point being made. The figure below provides an example.

By encouraging our students to think about the structure of their argument before they start writing, we will help them to become more efficient and much clearer in their thinking and writing.

Tell a Story: A story makes a communication much more compelling. Stories make information easier to remember and they make it more believable (Neuhauser, 1993). If only the facts and findings are presented without a compelling picture to support them, it is less likely that the audience will be convinced. Research into stories shows repeatedly that a story convinces people more than do the facts alone (Martin & Powers, 1983).

But how does someone tell a story in a business report? One way is through headlines. Rather than labeling charts and sections with descriptions of what they contain, they can be labeled with the point to be made. A well-constructed report or presentation should make sense and tell the story, even if one only reads the headlines. Headlines also give the writer the opportunity to direct the audience’s attention.

But sometimes a real story tells much more than headlines ever could. A former colleague of mine, Jeremy Raymond, was once hired by a government ministry to improve its cost management system. One of the questions he investigated was how the current system of cost codes was administered. Quantitative analyses showed that there was about a 30 percent error rate on the codes that were entered into the system. Jeremy interviewed one accounting clerk who told him that whenever the cost code was not on the form he was working with, and he didn’t know it from memory, he looked out his window to find an appropriate license plate in the parking lot. Jeremy included both findings in his final report.

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It is our responsibility to teach all facets of writing. We must find ways to help our students think about their audiences, structure their arguments, and tell a story every time they put pen to paper, or more appropriately, fingers to a keyboard.

Martin, J. and Powers, M.E. (1983). Truth or

     corporate propaganda: The value of a good war

     story. In L.R. Pondy, P.J. Frost, G.Morgan, T.C.

     Dandridge, ed. Organization Symbolism, Greenwich,

     CT: JAI Press, 99-101.

Neuhauser, P.C. (1993). Corporate Legends and Lore,

     Austin, TX: PCN Associates, 5-6.

Much of the material and some of the text from this article are excerpted from:

Vandenbosch, B. (2003). Designing Solutions for Your

     Business Problems, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Did you know…

Betty Vandenbosch grew up on a farm, the eldest daughter of Dutch immigrants? She is a sailboat racer and loves rooting for the underdog, a skill she honed by living in Cleveland for 15 years, during which time, not one Cleveland team won a national championship. But now that you’re at Kaplan, you’re certainly on a winning team here!  Betty is the Dean of the School of Business and Management at Kaplan University.

[This article was originally published in our September, 2009 issue.]