In Business, You Succeed by Being the Best in Your Niche. You Supercharge Your Success With Strong Writing.
Writing is writing, right? The kinds of skills you need to master writing in journalism, fiction, or academia are the same skills you need in business.
Except . . .
Business professionals face unique challenges as writers. They usually write to produce results, not just to inform audiences or express ideas. They often use specialized language, with technical meaning, but must also connect with general audiences. Finally, professionals also operate in a pressurized environment where the priority is to produce on other, non-writing tasks.
Therefore, any good program for business writing must do two things:
- Master the core skills and techniques of writing, which apply in all fields.
- Adapt those skills to the unique context of professional life.
That is what we do at The Elements of Writing. With clear, step by step books, seminars, coaching, and consulting, we provide simple and direct techniques to write better in all fields.
We pay special attention to the specific kinds of documents you need to produce. Before meeting, we get an inventory of the major documents in your organization and identify its special form and style. We also provide specific techniques to apply what we learn to your work—right away, as soon as you return to your desk.
The result is a program that will improve your efficiency and creativity not just as a writer, but in all you do.
The Elements of Writing offers three sets of products and services to meet your needs: Books, Coaching and Consulting, Seminars and Webinars.
Books
Start your journey with any of the following books:
The Elements of Writing: The comprehensive system for writing in all fields. Based on the latest research on learning and the brain, The Elements of Writing offers a three-stage strategy for mastery: storytelling, mechanics, and analysis. The book’s 79 sections include detailed explanations, how-to instructions, case studies, and exercises. (Buy The Elements of Writing today in ebook or paperback formats.)
What’s Wrong With Business Writing: Better writing could improve efficiency, creativity, and teamwork in all professions. So why is business writing so bad? To write well requires three things, usually lacking in the professions: (1) A complete system for writing, with simple, intuitive skills based on how the brain works; (2) A process for using that system at all levels of the organization; and (3) a culture of writing, which informs people’s work on a wide range of projects. (Buy What’s Wrong With Business Writing … And How To Fix It now.)
How to Write a High Impact Book: Business professionals are finding a book to offer the perfect “calling card” to become thought leaders in their fields.But first-time authors waste hundreds of hours of time. Following a number of simple tricks can help to flatten the learning curve for books and other major writing projects. (Buy How to Write a High-Impact Book now.)
How Email Can Save Your Life: Ridiculous claim, right? But think of it this way: If you can master the art of the short note — offering the news, updates, analyses, and explainers that other professionals need — you will connect better with colleagues, clients, prospects, and more. By focusing on emails, you can burn the essential skills of writing in to your brain.
Mad Men’s Guide to Persuasion: Using quick case studies of 60 scenes from the Emmy Award-winning, Mad Men’s Guide to Persuasion breaks down the essential strategies of persuasion. (Buy Mad Men’s Guide to Persuasion now.)
Coaching and Consulting
Turbocharge your transformation by arranging one-on-one coaching sessions … or go deeper with a comprehensive plan to make everyone in your department writer better and faster in a matter of weeks.
Seminars and Webinars
The Elements of Writing Strategic Writing Seminars will:
- Show you the core skills of great writing in all fields—and adapt those skills to your challenges as a professional.
- Use your actual documents—in draft or final form—to show how to use the elements of writing for all challenges.
- Provide a checklist of all of the considerations for all professional writing challenges.
- Offer a strategy to deploy your new skills and understanding … as soon as you return to your desk.
Possible Seminar Topics
When we construct a seminar for your business, we will begin the conversation with these basic elements:
- The T Bar—Why Writing Power is Business Power
Most companies—especially in technical, specialized fields or with large corporate structures—focus on their “verticals.” But whatever your mastery of the verticals, you also need to connect across the silos. McKinsey Consulting uses the T-shaped organizational structure to describe how. The horizontal bar of the T represents the connections between the divisions. When a business can provide the depth of expertise of the I’s—and then connect those I’ s with good, smart communication—the company has a chance to do extraordinary things.
- One Simple Technique to Transform Your Writing—Right Now
The Golden Rule of Writing provides a simple and intuitive hack for all levels of writing: the sentence, paragraph, section, and whole piece. Using the Golden Rule—with the help of the Landscape View—provides a process for you to gain control of your writing and to “burn” good writing habits into your brain.
- ‘One True Sentence’—How to Get it Right, Line by Line
The sentence is the single most important unit of writing. If we can write great sentences, every time, we have a chance to write great paragraphs and whole pieces. The sentence begins with a simple core. But to gain real power, you need to master the “hinge sentence.” Also: In professional settings, writers need to be on the lookout for wordiness and jargon.
- Writing Stellar Paragraphs with Buckets and Tabloid Headlines
The paragraph is the most neglected element of writing—and it shows. Too many paragraphs ramble without purpose or focus. In this unit, we will use the concept of the “idea bucket” to stay focused. Using the Tabloid Headline and Landscape View, we’ll gain mastery of the second most important unit of writing.
- Finding the Right Shape: Blueprints for All Pieces
Writing a great piece requires finding the right shape. The eternal structure of all communications is the story. But how does that work? And what are the variations on this theme? What are the different “shapes” of pieces? How can we adapt this core structure to different kinds of writing? Can we use simple blueprints to structure our work?
- Editing With Focus, from Big to Small
“Write with your heart,” Hemingway once said, “but edit with your head.” Most writers struggle with editing because they try to do too much at the same time. In this unit, we explore how to break editing into stages to focus on one challenge at a time. With techniques like the Landscape View, Tabloid Headlines, and Clutter Cutter, we can create the focus we need to do it well.
- Getting the Right Style—What You Have in Common With George Clooney, the Williams Sisters, and Stephen Curry?
Style is the unique expression of an idea, often with surprising and delightful flourishes. But in all fields—art, music, architecture, and even science and business—style requires mastery of the basics. Using a process we call “stacking” —and building on the skills from our unit on sentences—we will explore how to transform the simplest elements of writing into your own distinctive style or brand.
Following Up
Learning is never enough. What really matters is how you apply what you learn. This seminar is designed to give you a clear plan of attack—whatever you want to do as an organization or department.
