I really wanted to like the letter that Barack Obama left in the Oval Office for Donald Trump. Ultimately, though, it’s nothing but platitudes. It certainly hasn’t helped. Imagine for a moment the situation of outgoing President Obama writing a letter for incoming President Trump on Inauguration Day in January. On substance and policy, the…
Investor Shervin Pishevar wrote a letter defending his friend, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, as investors attempted to eject him from Uber’s board of directors. It’s the most florid business communication you’ll ever see. In a moment of passion, you may be tempted to write like this. Don’t — it’ll come back to haunt you….
Yesterday, Rich Rowe, CEO of Arkema, warned that his chemical plant near Houston might explode. Today it exploded. When you know something like this is going to happen, you need to get right to the point. Rich Rowe didn’t. The Arkema plant is in Crosby, Texas, about 25 miles from downtown Houston. Houston, of course,…
New research from Ben-Gurion University shows why you should never use an emoji in business communication. Researchers Ella Glikson, Arik Cheshin, Gerben A. van Kleef tested emojis with 549 people from 29 countries. Here’s what they found: Participants who received emails with smiley-face icons rated the sender as less competent. While smileys are supposed to make…
President Trump tweets lots of spelling errors. In the New York Times, Farhad Manjoo says this is just a sign of the times. It’s fine to spell things however you want on social media your friends, but when you’re communicating with people who matter — like, say, the entire citizenry of the United States —…
Here are a few words on what it feels to successfully create art, and why we can never really understand it. This weekend I attended “The Fabrication of Imagination,” a show put on by the Arts League of Lowell, Massachusetts. The people there were fascinating. I met Judith Wombwell, an artist originally trained as a choreographer…
Hurricane Harvey looks like a devastating storm. But with the media deploying superlatives so frequently, is there any capacity for alarm left for this actual emergency? I analyze the lead hurricane article from The Weather Channel for precision, clarity, and effectiveness. The lesson here: context is crucial when describing a potential disaster. Start with this:…
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…