Business writing

As children, we learn by trial and error. We fall, get up, and try again. Sometimes the mistakes are painful. We learn not to tug the cat’s tail or grab at hot pans on the stove. 

We continue to learn from our mistakes as we grow. Remember your first full-time job? I shudder to remember my earliest content marketing attempts.

As we continue in our careers, our tolerance for mistakes disappears. The stakes are higher and errors can be costlier.

So, what do we do? Too often, we decide we know ‘enough’ and put aside the learning mindset. We keep doing the things that are safe and comfortable. 

And playing it safe is itself a mistake—especially when operating in a world of flux and change.

How can we keep advancing in our careers without experiencing painful or embarrassing mistakes? Through stories.

Learning from other people’s mistakes

When we read or listen to a story, we put ourselves in the protagonist’s place for a moment. When they make a mistake, we can internalize the lesson. That is powerful magic.

Technology companies love sharing “customer success” stories that model how customers use their applications. While success stories are wonderful, we may learn more from their opposites: failure stories.

When I set out to write my latest book about business emails, I knew it needed stories. The title of the book, 33 Ways Not to Screw Up Your Business Emails, prompted me to look for tales of failure.

I asked people for their embarrassing email stories, and they responded! Some were funny, others cringe-inducing. People sent many more stories than could fit in the book, but each one contributed to my sense of the pervasive problems of email. And all held lessons for others.

This got me thinking about how we share our successes much more readily than our failures. Maybe that’s a missed opportunity.

Sharing our failures is generous

When we want to help others, it’s tempting to tell them what we think they should do. It may be more effective, however, to let them know what does not work. Your goal is not to instill fear of change, but to inspire learning.

Yes, that means that you have to show up as flawed and imperfect. That’s generous, too. Because we are all flawed and imperfect.

Which stories should you share? It depends on what your readers might need. Look for uncomfortable experiences that also bring happy endings—lessons learned, situations rectified.

Show a path to the future. Don’t be afraid to model learning, with all its messiness and mistakes.

Try this: Whether it’s for your next blog post or journal entry, explore a time you made a mistake, and what you took from it. Would others find this valuable? Experiment with writing it, creating a narrative that includes the lessons learned. And if you’re comfortable, try sharing it with others. You might be surprised at the responses.

Related Reading

Writing Your Way from Suffering to Serving

Stories and Fiction, Facts and Truth

 

Our crowded inboxes drive us nuts. We resent their intrusion on our lives and the pull they have on our attention when we’re trying to work.

Then we get frustrated when other people don’t respond to the emails we send them.

Plenty of people think that email is broken. In A World Without Email, Cal Newport writes about the cost that the constant stream work-related emails has on actual productivity. It’s a fascinating book, yet even Newport agrees that email will be with us for a long time.

It’s time to confess that we are part of the problem.

• We contribute to cluttered, unmanageable inboxes by writing messy, stream-of-consciousness emails that put the burden on the recipient to make sense of them.
• We don’t include enough information, generating a swarm of follow-up emails.
• We fire off a response quickly to show how responsive we are, without contributing to the discussion.

When we don’t use email with enough intention, we contribute to its burdens for everyone—ourselves included.

Who has time to polish email messages?

We’re all busy. Most of my email mistakes happen because I’m trying to move too quickly: to clear out my inbox, to respond right away, to get through the email so I can get back to writing.

It’s almost always worth spending time on the most important emails—the ones to your team, colleagues, partners, or clients.

Better yet, you can adopt processes to protect yourself from the worst email failures. I think of them as safety nets. Once established, they save you time and hassles down the road.

Here are three reasons for investing a little time and attention in your email habits.

#1 – Protect your reputation

In a fast-paced world, we toss off emails quickly, without a lot of care. And that sometimes backfires. 

As I researched my latest book, 33 Ways Not to Screw Up Your Business Emails, people sent me stories of emails gone wrong. There were many:

• The inside joke unintentionally forwarded to the customer
• The person who sent a complaint about a colleague to the person driving them nuts instead of the manager
• The sensitive email about an executive appointment that sat on a shared printer where everyone could see it

Emails can misfire in so many ways, sometimes without our knowing it. People misinterpret the tone of our emails all the time, and we have no idea it’s happening.

Most email failures are survivable, but why put your business reputation at risk? 

#2 – Differentiate yourself

In a world of dysfunctional email, you can rise above the fray. You can show up as someone who thinks and communicates with clarity.

A few extra moments crafting a thoughtful subject line and clear opening will inspire people to open your email, or to find it later when they need it. 

Add subheads and a logical structure to a lengthy email, and people will think better of you because they understand what you want. 

Spend a few moments thinking about everything the recipient needs, and you can avoid back-and-forth messages.

#3 – Hone your writing skills

People tell me all the time that they don’t have time to write. But you probably write email messages every day. Approach that writing with intention.

Emails are an opportunity to cultivate clarity of thought and expression. They give us a chance to practice our writing skills—every darned day.

Related content

Find a whole host of email writing tips, best practices, and inspiration in my new book 33 Ways Not to Screw Up Your Business Emails.

Are you inadvertently wasting other people’s time when you speak or write? Here’s a cautionary tale for anyone who works in a field that uses acronyms, abbreviations, and other jargon.

“We had an NPS of 80.”

That comment came from a marketer on a panel discussion in a video. She was referring to Net Promoter Score—a metric of how willing customers are to recommend a business to others.

A few people commented on that score, and then the conversation moved on. I thought nothing of it, alas.

But here’s the thing—not everyone on the panel came from the world of marketing. Probably not everyone in the audience, either. The average person on the street has no reason to know or care about Net Promoter Score.

One of the panelists was mystified, but didn’t want to interrupt to clarify. As she told me later, “When you’re in the thick of it, you don’t like to ask, because you don’t like to look like an idiot.”

(We’ve all experienced that uncomfortable feeling when we don’t know something that others do.)

This woman (my new friend and ally in the jargon battle) is clearly diligent, because she set out to learn what the term meant.

Alas, she mis-heard the “N” as an “M.” So she searched for MPS after the call and found nothing that made sense for the context. (Meters per second? Minnesota Public Schools?)

Next she asked friends and colleagues—no one knew what MPS referred to.

She reached out to me, because I was on the panel and she didn’t remember who had mentioned it. She asked, “If you know what it is, would you mind enlightening me, so I don’t feel left out of the loop next time I hear it?”

Let’s recap here. She felt confused when she heard (misheard) the term. She spent time searching online, then consulting her colleagues, then crafting a message to me asking about the term.

How much time did the abbreviation save us in conversation? In contrast, how much time did she spend chasing down its meaning? And how about the cost of her feeling like an outsider?

Jargon may save you time, but at what cost?

The False Time Savings of Jargon

The word jargon refers to terminology known mostly to insiders in an industry. We use it for many reasons, including demonstrating our expertise or insider status in a group.

But we also use it to save time when communicating with colleagues. It’s faster to use abbreviations or acronyms than to spell things out. Academics use specific terms to be exceedingly precise when communicating with others.

When we use those terms with others outside of that specific domain, jargon quickly becomes a huge time sink—not for you, but for the people reading or listening to you.

If you are writing something that will go out into the world, or recording an interview, you cannot be sure who will listen. Even in the confines of your own workplace, you can alienate someone who is new at the job.

You might save a couple seconds by saying NPS instead of Net Promoter Score, but waste countless minutes of your listeners’ or readers’ time. They won’t appreciate it.

Respect the reader’s time by clarifying or eliminating industry terminology.

Alas, we are all subject to using jargon unknowingly. I am sure that I have done the same, unwittingly making people feel left out or uncertain.

What can we do about it?

First, recognize when we use it.

It’s tough detecting the jargon in our own words—that’s the curse of knowledge in action.

When we’re speaking live, as this panelist was, it’s difficult to catch.

When writing, however, we have a golden opportunity to protect the reader. It’s called revision.

Here are a few things to consider:

• Scan your work for acronyms, abbreviations, or other industry terms and either spell them out or define them the first time they appear.
• Use spelling/grammar checking software. If it coughs on a term, then that phrase is probably not familiar to all of your readers.
• Ask an editor or someone else to read your work and be ruthless about highlighting anything unfamiliar. (If you ask a colleague in the same line of work, they may not spot the jargon.)

Second, be an advocate for the listener when you hear someone else using a term that might be unfamiliar. (In the terminology of allyship, be a jargon upstander.)

When you hear someone else using jargon in a meeting or on a Zoom call, clarify it for anyone who may be left out.

You don’t have to call people out on using the term—you don’t want to embarrass the speaker, but to clarify for the listener. You can be subtle.

If it’s an acronym or abbreviation, spell it out. If it’s an industry term, use it in context. Consider doing both.

This story made me question—how many times have I made readers feel unwelcome or insecure by using terms thoughtlessly? How much of other people’s time have I wasted by not taking the time to revise or clarify?

I wish I registered the abbreviation on that call. If I had, I could have said something like, “Wow, that’s a really terrific Net Promoter Score. Did your company rely heavily on that metric to track customer loyalty?”

Hindsight is always better than foresight. Let’s all help each other.

Respect the reader’s time by taking a moment to clarify.

Related Reading

Read the post Why and How to Filter Your Jargon.

For advice on dealing with jargon in the workplace, see The Workplace Writer’s Process.

For the larger issue of writing about abstract topics, see Writing to Be Understood: What Works and Why.

Conspicuous consumption has a bad reputation, for good reason. It’s about relying on flash rather than substance, status symbols rather than earned admiration.

We can often tell when someone is trying to impress us with flash. Most of the time, we lose respect for that person.

According to a study into the use of jargon titled “Compensatory Conspicuous Communication,” the same thing may happen when people use jargon in their speech or writing. The research suggests that people sometimes use jargon as “a communicative form of conspicuous consumption.”

The authors of the study start by offering one of the best academic definitions of jargon that I’ve seen [italics are mine]:

Jargon is “socially learned words or expressions used by a particular profession or specialized group, which are used in place of more broadly accessible and less formal alternatives, and are difficult for outsiders to understand.”

Zachariah C. Brown, Eric M. Anicich, and Adam D. Galinsky

A word or phrase can be jargon if others don’t understand it and if there’s a simpler way to describe it.

Why, then, do we turn to those words?

Jargon as a status symbol

Sometimes, we use this language by accident. We forget what it’s like to not know what the words mean. (That’s the Curse of Knowledge in action.)

But sometimes people use jargon to signal belonging to an in-group. If you know the jargon, you’re in. And industries rich in jargon often have high status.

The less secure people are in their status and belonging, the more likely they are to revert to acronyms, complex sentences, and hard-to-understand jargon. This happens even when they write or speak to people outside their industry, who are not part of the “in-crowd” signaled by the language.

The researchers conducted several tests to compare the use of jargon by people in low- or high-status situations. For example:

• They collected thesis titles from candidates from low- and high-status graduate schools and analyzed them for complexity and acronyms.
• In another study, they invited MBA students to participate in pitch competitions. Then they manipulated the students’ sense of status and noted whether they chose descriptions rich in jargon.
• In live conversations about arcane topics, researchers tinkered with the participants’ perceived status and analyzed the words they used.

In each case, they found that people in lower-status situations were more likely to choose acronyms and jargon.

This report also includes a candidate for the understatement of the week, about academic writing:

“Academics have long been critiqued for using less readable language than may be necessary to communicate their ideas.”

Your ten-dollar words and insider acronyms may signal your own insecurities.

Are you focused on the reader, or yourself?

The study doesn’t offer a proven remedy, but I have a suggestion: focus on serving the needs of your audience.

Yes, this is yet another case in which to apply servant authorship.

When you worry about broadcasting or inflating your own status (whether consciously or not), you are more likely to reach for acronyms and specialized vocabulary.

This tendency presents two dangers:

1. Outsiders are likely to feel left out when they encounter unfamiliar terms.
2. Insiders may suspect or sense that you’re trying too hard.

Jargon is a terrible tool for demonstrating your status or expertise. Let your bio communicate your expertise.

Earn status and respect from the strength of your ideas and the crystal clarity of your expression.

Related Reading

A Servant Authorship Mindset: Why It Matters

How and Why to Filter the Jargon

In business writing, book authoring, and software coding, revision is how we get to our best work. But the act of revision challenges many writers. They either want to rush through it to get to the finished product, or they get mired in doubts whether the work is good enough. Having a well-defined process might be the answer.

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If you have a hard time with revision, try thinking about it like a coder: as a recursive function.

It’s been many years since I studied programming, but recursive functions stick in my head because they caused me some grief in homework assignments.

Quickly, a recursive function is a segment of code that executes multiple times, each time working with the output of the previous pass. The code keeps cycling back through the loop until a condition has been met and the code continues.

Why do I remember this so clearly from programming? Because if you haven’t created a careful exit plan, your program can get stuck in an infinite loop. That’s generally best avoided.

Recursion and Revision

Using recursion as a metaphor for revision can be useful. To revise your own work, you want to cycle through it a number of times, each time working with the improved version from the last time. And you need to clearly delineate either the number of passes or what success looks like, so you know when to exit the process.

Where the metaphor falls apart, alas, is what happens during each pass through the manuscript. A program executes the same code. As the author/reviser, you want to do different things in each revision pass, working from the highest level to the most detailed, granular one.

I advise writers to define their revision process from the top down, or outside in. For a major blog post, for example, your revision process might look like this:

1. Structural pass: Start with the big-picture analysis: Does this make sense for my objectives? Does it include what the reader wants or needs to know? Does the structure serve the reader’s needs?
2. Reader’s flow: Approach it from start to finish, as your reader might. Do the sentences flow, or does the reader have to double back to make sense of them? Does the logic work? Are there too many details, or too few? Is it repetitive?
3. Language: Make the text more beautiful or pithy by tightening the wording, choosing active verbs, eliminating repetition, and scrubbing out jargon and unnecessary abstractions.
4. Proofreading: Look for typos, duplicate words, grammar glitches and punctuation problems.

Some writing won’t need four passes. You can often combine the first two and second two for short posts. And a book manuscript may require extra passes for things like fact-checking.

You decide what happens in your revision function.

How This Can Help You

If you’re not yet convinced, here are three reasons to try this out on your next piece of writing:

It’s efficient

Like the programming technique, structuring an iterative revision process is efficient—if you work in the right order. Fix the structure first, so you don’t spend time proofreading and polishing a section you need to cut.

It provides a roadmap

Instead of asking, “Is this piece any good?” you can ask smaller questions as you improve your work:

• Does it have the right structure?
• Does the writing flow?
• Is it concise and clear?

It’s much easier to correct these issues than to assess whether the work is good enough (whatever that means).

You have an endpoint

If you’re working on something like a book manuscript, you can create a spreadsheet and track your process through the various passes. When you’ve done your passes, it’s time to move on to the next phase, whether that’s hitting the Publish button or sending it to a professional editor.

If this sounds like a lot of work, remember that great writing is born in revision. It’s worth the effort.

Other Resources

I cover this approach to revision, along with other revision exercises, in a short online course Revising Your Writing. Use the coupon code BLOG to get the course for $20. (Enter the coupon on the payment screen.)

Business writers can find more advice in The Workplace Writer’s Process.

You might enjoy these posts:

• Revising for Cognitive Ease
• Finding Your Revision Groove (and Staying Sane)