Matt Mullenweg, the originator of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, is fighting with Avishai Abrahami, CEO of Wix. (Both companies make it easy to build web content.) The question driving this fight is the appropriate use of open source code. But what’s really at stake is reputation — and on that front, Abrahami’s wry commentary…
Instructions are tricky. You need to be clear and brief, write directly to the user, and most importantly, make sure that the instructions match reality. Based on my experience with health insurance, this a prescription that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts needs, stat. I had previously used the excellent Blue Cross Blue Shield plan from…
The only purpose of business writing is to create a change in the reader. Create the change and you succeed; fail to make the change and you’ve wasted your time. Before you spend hours on a piece of writing, spend 15 minutes on the one tool that will make it most likely to be effective. Learn…
Why do you work? To make money? Or because you’re doing something that you love? Not all of us get to do work that we love. If we’re lucky, we don’t do work that we hate. Here’s my idea of what you should do to move your career forward. Take a job that pays enough…
Visions statements inspire. Wells Fargo’s inspired fraud. A close read of the company’s Vision & Values Statement reveals how the bank’s employees took some of the statements in this vision too far, ignored others, and created a corrupt scheme to meet quotas and violate customers’ trust. Elizabeth Warren mentioned the Vision & Values Statement during her withering…
UPS has the information about customers, locations, and shipments to be an amazing leader in customer experience (CX). It has the people, devices, and bar codes to turn the Internet of Things — of packages — into an artificially intelligent engine for customer delight. But based on my experience, UPS is the slave, not the master,…
Wells Fargo employees opened 2 million fake bank and credit card accounts to pad their paychecks with bonuses, according to regulators. The bank will pay a $185 million settlement and has fired 5,300 people. “When we make mistakes, we are open about it,” the CEO said. Are they? Actually, it’s the opposite. By any measure, this is…
Should business writers write like journalists? Some journalist habits — like never burying the lede — make perfect sense. But if you imagine you’re Woodward and Bernstein, you’re deluded. Learn which journalistic conventions will make your writing better, and which will ruin it. Journalist habits that business writers should adopt Journalists and business writers share…
Today I release “The State of Business Writing, 2016,” my first research report about the challenges of writing at work, based on a survey of 547 business writers. This is the first public release of the whole set of research. Biggest takeaways: 81% of people who write for work agree with the statement “Poorly written material wastes my…