Do technical specialists need good writing skills?

One of the biggest lessons I have learned in my career is the importance of writing in the workplace.

I initially treated as fait accompli my skills as a writer; after all I wrote an academic thesis for my graduate program, was a college debater and an op-ed columnist for my college newspaper.

However, as I learned, and am still learning, writing at work is very different than in college or as a hobby. The best way to help elevate your priorities, evangelize your knowledge, build consensus around a plan and provide updates is to write clearly and with your audience in mind.

With that said, I wanted to share some wisdom I have gained over the years from my mistakes and those of others.

Before you hit “SEND” (or “SHARE”), ask yourself if your memo/missive has accounted for the following:

1. Define a goal: Whether it is a problem you wish to solve or concept you need to explain, leadership requires choices and prioritization. Pick a goal and focus on it. Otherwise, your memo will be a farrago of interesting but unrelated details, all of which will not fit together to form a recognizable whole.
2. State the purpose of your memo clearly - Is it intended to persuade or educate? Are you prompting a Darwinian debate or communicating an evolved decision? Even if you intend to do both, calling out the purpose explicitly will help set expectations for your reader early.
3. Very early on, your memo must answer 4 key questions for the reader: Why is this important for the reader? Why is it important coming from you? What will they need to do as a result of this proposal? What will change for them as a result of this proposal?
4. Content is king/queen but context is the army. Be sure to educate yourself, and weave into your writing, all the background on this topic that is already in place so the reader can establish a starting point from which to consume and consider your input.
5. Preempt as many questions as you can: Where can someone go for additional details? What approaches have you considered and rejected? Have you introduced any terms endemic to your area of expertise that your reader may find confusing?
6. On the topic of decisions, is it concise and to-the-point? If not, the only decision your reader will probably make is to stop reading and move on. When a manager asked me to prune a 13-page memo early in my career, I responded that no one complained when Mozart wrote long symphonies. My response was probably not music to her ears since she asked me to shrink it down to bare essentials.
7. On that note, your reader’s attention is a diminishing commodity - so use it wisely. The content in the memo is not intended to demonstrate how much you know about a topic but rather what your reader needs to know. Your guiding principle should be “Show me” rather than “Show off for me.”
8. Avoid the passive voice. While it is a useful tool to avoid direct attribution, it also robs authority and directness from your approach.
9. Avoid being overly declarative - do not let your conviction in an overall strategy blind you to vulnerabilities in your business case. Are you stating as a certainty aspects of your evidence that are more likely a probability? Excessive exuberance will cost you credibility (and multiple cycles of clarification) when tentative (but hopefully quantified) confidence would have sufficed.
10. Don’t draft people to your case: Learn to distinguish between a favorable opinion and an expression of support. As much as you wish to bolster your case by claiming support from key stakeholders, you will want to confirm that they are willing to have their name used.
11. Don’t plagiarize - In school, stealing someone else’s work can get you in trouble. The workplace is trickier, since rather than individual assignments a typical work product is a culmination and aggregation of multiple contributors. As the project leader, you may so identify with someone else’s idea that you may forget where their contribution ended and yours began. When not in doubt, attribute. When in doubt, attribute. You will avoid two pitfalls as a result: you will avoid looking like a credit hog, and second, you will demonstrate the richness of the finished product.
12. Remember what your definition of success (See “#1 “pick a target” above) was when you set out. It is easy to get overwhelmed and shift once feedback rolls in. How you absorb feedback and improve your product is a prototype of the leadership you will display in execution. Stay resolute or improvise not based on volume but wisdom viewed through the prism of your judgment and experience.

Unlike the writing you do for yourself, writing for work-related projects is different in another critical way.

For your colleagues, outside of the outcome of your initiatives, your written communication may be the only indicator and harbinger of your competence or lack thereof. In the rush to get to the next deliverable, you do not want to unleash a product whose after-effects will live on for far longer than it took to draft it.