HELPING FUTURE FINANCIAL LEADERS DEVELOP BUSINESS WRITING SKILLS

Businesspeople are busy. They do not want to read long emails, memos, and / or documents to find what they are looking for. Businesspeople expect to receive clear and concise correspondence. Future financial leaders currently do not have effective business writing skills. Furthermore, the learning curve to develop these skills is steep due to Gen-Z’s communication preferences and how they are learning to write. Gen-Z will need to develop these critical business writing skills to advance their careers.

Bentley University students are surprised when I tell them that I spent far more time writing, reading, and editing documents than I did working with Excel spreadsheets when I was a public company CFO at both ON Technology and Constant Contact. CFOs are involved with writing and / or editing a wide variety of documents including financing memorandums, SEC filings, press releases, commercial contracts, and compensation plans.

Gen-Z has grown up with cell phones in their hands. This generation is comfortable sending out on-demand communications and receiving immediate responses. BRB (Be right back), IDK (I do not know), OMW (On my way), and LMK (Let me know) have become common communications terms for Gen-Z and others. Unsurprisingly, Bentley students have reported that text messaging is their preferred method of communication. Although text messaging is concise, text messages are too short to provide sufficient information for most business communications.

Text messaging does have limited use in the business world for quick questions or comments, such as “Can I call you now” or “I am on my way.” However, businesspeople do not use text messaging for making decisions or supporting arguments. Post-graduation, Gen-Z will soon realize that cell phone numbers are often unavailable, and that other generations prefer not to use text messaging for communication.

Common writing courses at universities cover creative writing, research paper writing, and expository writing. These styles of writing are valuable for certain careers. However, these writing styles are ineffective in most business situations. The purpose of a business document is to help the reader(s) make a business decision by providing relevant information in a clear and concise fashion.

Future financial leaders can improve their business writing skills by adhering to the following guidelines.

STRUCTURE WRITTENS DOCUMENTS INTO THREE SECTIONS

The first section is an introductory paragraph which serves as a mini-executive summary. This paragraph will enable the reader to quickly know what the rest of the document covers and will help the reader determine whether they want to read the rest of the document. This introductory paragraph must grab the reader at “hello”. This section should also explicitly state the open business decision or asserted argument in the document.

The second section provides the background and support regarding the open business decision or asserted argument. This section needs to balance robustness with length. If this section is too long, the reader may lose interest. This section should exclude any information that does not directly support the introductory paragraph.

The third section wraps up the document and restates the open business decision or asserted argument.

In other words, paraphrasing an old adage, “ Tell ’em what you are going to tell ’em; then tell ’em; then tell ’em what you’ve told ’em.”

REVIEW AND EDIT THE DOCUMENT

Before sending out the document, the writer should review and edit the document.

Be concise.

o Identify and remove sentences that are unnecessary.

o Identify wordy phrases and rewrite them with less words.

o Remove extraneous information that is irrelevant to making a business decision or supporting a business argument. Include tangential information that may be of interest to readers in an appendix.

Be clear.

o Remove abbreviations and spell out acronyms that may not be clear to all readers. For example, use “What do you think” instead of WDYT.

o Ensure that a reader immediately knows what the word ‘it’ refers to when used as a pronoun.

With proper training, future financial leaders can be part of the solution to the business writing problem that may be costing American Business nearly $400 billion per year.