My clients all have too much work to do. So they ask the product or project leaders to write a business case for each effort. The clients claim this information helps them decide which work to do and not do. However, everyone knows each business case is at least partially fiction. That’s because the writer […]
When we speak, we often use shortcuts, jargon, and cleverness to get our points across. If we confuse anyone in the audience, we can explain what we’re thinking in the moment. However, when we write, all that cleverness doesn’t always help our ideal reader understand. Sometimes, we alienate or confuse our ideal readers with our
If you’ve ever tried to write nonfiction, you probably encountered these problems: Your readers only understood what you wrote. Not what you meant to write. Only some readers got value from your pieces, not everyone. The writing you ended up with at the end might have looked very different from the piece you started with.
You have some terrific experience in your team, such as pairing, and you decide it’s time to write about it. And you have a problem. The developers and testers need one perspective, coaches need a different perspective, and managers need a third perspective. What do you do? Choose one ideal reader and write a piece
Do you ever encounter perfection rules when you write (or create in any way)? Maybe you’ve heard these statements—or you’ve said them to yourself: We must spend a lot of time “polishing” to create perfect writing. We must not publish until the work is perfect. We can create a perfect piece and it’s worth our
Modern Management: Encourage Experiments and Learning How much of your work directly supports the people you lead and serve? How much of your work supports the environment or the culture so the people can be more effective? If you work directly with the people you lead and serve, you work in the business. If you work to
Most of us writers start with bad advice, to write “formally.” We’re not supposed to talk to the reader. Or, we’re supposed to avoid stories. Worse, we’re supposed to use passive voice. That leads us to write like this: <A person> will be missed. Your work is appreciated. This work needs to be undertaken. Here’s
Too many nonfiction writers still listen to advice from their long-ago English teachers. That advice was, “Edit as you go.” Editing as you go slows your writing and allows you to get stuck. Instead, wait until you’re done writing down before you edit. That’s because our brains work differently when we write down vs. when
Someone asks you for information and you don’t know the answer. Maybe a senior manager asks, “When can the customers expect this particular feature?” Or your manager asks, “How does this specific architecture work for our product?” A colleague or a person you serve asks, “Why are we doing this?” You might freeze and not
Make Better Decisions When You Have Too Much Ambiguity As a leader in the organization, you have a Big Decision to make. You need more data. However, getting the data is impossible in the timeframe you need to decide. The data you want might not even exist. What do you do? You could pray. I’m