One of my simplest and most powerful tips is to use “I,” “we,” and “you” in your business writing. Now researchers at the A. B. Freeman school of Business at Tulane have proven my point. As described in the Wall Street Journal, Zhenhua Chen and Serena Loftus of Tulane conducted pairs of simulated earnings calls. One…
Despite what you hear on cable news and see on your Facebook feed, shouting is not a reasonable substitute for logic. Once we forget how to think and communicate clearly, everything else is lost. Time to bone up on your rhetorical hygiene. Let’s start with what I’ll call “The Golden Rule of Rhetoric”: Don’t use…
It’s easy to forget that businesses are made of people. When you write a case study for a business book, blog post, or article, readers need to see those people as human. Here’s how to do that quickly without getting in the way of the story you’re telling. People in business prose need to be…
Today’s question is about the pursuit of perfection — not only how to do it, but when it makes sense. Dear Dr. Wobs: On perfection: how close to 100% error-free can an editor aspire to? What tools can help a mere mortal get a little closer? Martha Pings Perfection is a dangerous goal Dear Martha:…
Everyone consumes content online now, and video is ubiquitous. Is it time to admit that writing is obsolete? Not quite. But you must recognize the power of video and understand how it works with text to improve how-to and narrative communication. I recently had a mindset-altering conversation with a third-year medical student. She’s helping me…
Everybody has questions. Everybody wants answers. What determines your future is the kind of questions you ask, and whether the answers satisfy or stimulate you. One way to succeed is to get really good at something. This competency-focused mindset can get you a good job, and if you’re good at something for which there is…
Collaborating on a book is hard. Deadlines make it harder. The key is to develop a disciplined process and stick with it. To help you get to the end without tears, I’ll share some battle-tested collaboration tools and tips that will keep you focused on content excellence, not process glitches. (You’ll see where the bear…
Thought leaders are more likely to be wrong than other kinds of thinkers. The Darwinian marketplace of ideas ensures it. You should be skeptical about everything they say. Yesterday, I defined thought leaders this way: A thought leader is a person who has created a coherent body of ideas and is effective at communicating and…
There is so much blather that passes for thinking these days. If you imagine that you have a good argument, write about it. You’ll make it far stronger (or maybe figure out that you were wrong). I don’t care if your thesis is “Rex Tillerson is the best secretary of state in decades,” “Landscape architecture…