How to Improve Business Writing Skills: Start with Substance
Remember your Grade 7 English classes where you had to read through a comprehension passage and briefly summarize it within 100 words? Substance in business writing works similarly. What information most matters to the reader to help them know or do what you want?
Improving the substance in business writing is all about:
1. Analyzing audience to determine what information a reader needs.
2. Extracting relevant and significant information from complex ideas.
In other words, it means having the ability to summarize large chunks of data or facts into information that is meaningful for the reader.
Before you consider investing in workshops and seminars to improve business writing skills, you need to perform a simple test. Give your employees heaps of information and ask them to extract the most relevant information from it and summarize it in a short statement. If the employees or team members cannot do this easily and well, it's a sure diagnosis that you need to focus on improving the substance element of your employees' business writing.
Substance in business writing can be improved through continual on-the-job training. You can either lead a few exercises on your own or call in professional help.
If you want to do it on your own, here are a few activities you can conduct to judge and analyze the substance of your employees' business writing:
· Ask your employees why a project should it be funded. If the response is a ten-page disorganized report, then you need business writing training that focuses on organization, extraction of key information and appropriate substance.
· Ask your employees for solutions to any problem at work. Practical and well-summarized solutions indicate your employees’ strong analytical and writing skills.
· A potential employee’s response to, “Why should we hire you?” during an interview offers a clear insight about his or her writing and communication skills. If he or she cannot verbally extract the key information points verbally, he or she won't do it well in writing either.
· Watch how individual employees summarize the minutes of meetings, summarize analysis reports, or verbally summarize relevant insights discussed at meetings. All of these writing tasks require mastery of good substance/content in business writing. If you see any murky summaries, that is your clear diagnosis that you need to focus on improving the content and substance of your employees business writing. Don't start with syntax. Focus on substance and content in this situation.