Three signs of excellent business writing

It's not just the writing, it's also the process behind it!

What does a good memo review look like? How does it feel afterwards? 

Obviously it feels amazing to achieve the outcome you were hoping for: a big decision, some accountability perhaps, maybe just some plain good advice. Even better, you’ve earned the trust of leaders and stakeholders who participated in the review. In this article, we highlight some of the qualities that help memos achieve these outcomes.

This list is not comprehensive - but it covers the three most important qualities that I’ve observed. There’s a lot more than I can possibly cover in a single list, and I’ll be sure to include more in future updates - so as always, if you enjoy what you read, please subscribe for more! And, drop a comment if you have any feedback or suggestions.  

Clear thinking

Have you ever had a great idea that fell apart the moment you tried explaining it to somebody? Our brains are great at coming up with things, but even the brightest minds are prone to contradictions and fallacies if not given enough space. Writing provides you with the time and space to strengthen your ideas before you share and execute. 

How do you tell if someone’s writing is clear? Good memos tell a compelling story, without unnecessary embellishment. They paint a realistic picture of what is happening today, and share a believable plan to make things better. In business writing, many stories follow a common format: they explain a problem, explain why the problem happens, describe the solution to the problem, and articulate a plan to deliver the solution. 

A bad story often exaggerates the facts, fails to explain the problem, and obfuscates the solution. For example: 

Our customer cancellations skyrocketed this quarter. This is a huge problem and to remediate, we need to give our customer service teams more training and hire more staff who are qualified to take calls from upset customers. 

This leaves the reader hanging. What does ‘skyrocketed’ mean? There are a hundred reasons why customers might cancel - do we really understand why they are leaving? Why are we jumping to conclusions about training and hiring? It could be a number of other things.

A better story might bring in data to support the facts, and offer deeper insight into why things are happening: 

Our customer cancellation rate is up from 15% last quarter to 25% this quarter. We surveyed customers who canceled and 4 out of 5 said they were dissatisfied with customer service. This quarter, our call center software experienced issues with connectivity and we found that 75% of customers who were dissatisfied with service faced these issues. We will fix these issues on September 30th, and proactively reach out to customers by email to ensure they get the help they need. 

Now we’re onto something! There’s always room to improve further, but see how the reasons for customer cancellations are starting to make sense, and the actions you’re recommending correspond to these reasons. As a general principle, make sure the problem and solution are clear, and backed by data, real anecdotes, or facts.

Simple, concise language

Since everybody is talking about GenAI these days, let’s use it as an example once again. Imagine that your CEO asks you how we can use GenAI to solve your company’s customer service problems. In this imaginary world, pretend that your company’s call center is receiving an increasing volume of contacts from customers, and the costs are mounting. Perhaps your CEO read a news article claiming that GenAI can replace human call center agents.

You are a realist and you know that setting up GenAI is no cakewalk. To do it right, you need to train models on a data set of sufficient quality and size, then evaluate results closely to see if you’re getting reasonable outputs. You’ll need to plan for inevitable failures, such as when the model doesn’t have an answer or worse, when the model hallucinates an answer. There’s also the bigger question of should you even use GenAI - not all customers are happy to talk to robots, and you may be putting real human beings out of a job. 

When you present your recommendation to your CEO, you may be tempted to show your technical chops and unload a pile of technical buzzwords: LLMs, CNNs/RNNs, reinforcement learning, GPU clusters, prompt engineering (to be fair, this last one isn’t really a technical buzzword). 

But wait, is your goal to sound smart? Or is it to present an excellent plan? Trick question. Your goal is to help your CEO make the best possible decision. You need her to really understand what you’re saying, and bring her along with your ideas and recommendations. This won’t happen if the language you use is inaccessible. Keep words simple. If you must use technical words, define them first. Dress to impress, write to influence. 

Buy-in from partners

This one might sound strange at first, but hear me out. The process of writing a memo is just as important as the memo itself. When you go into a memo review, you need to be on the same page with those who contribute to the domain or project you are writing about.

Several years ago, I was the product manager responsible for defining how time-sensitive customers at crowded stores (e.g. convenience stores at an airport) could shop faster without waiting in line. Amazon previously built such an experience through its self-owned Amazon Go stores, and customers raved about the magical experience. But, this magic depended on customers using an Amazon-branded app and logging into their Amazon accounts to shop and pay. How would we replicate this magic at stores run by other retailers? Everyone had a strong opinion - from our technology teams to business development to our lawyers and marketers. 

I tried my best to stitch together everyone’s feedback into a document. The document itself was quite good, but the reviews of said memo went poorly, and we weren’t able to make decisions on what to do. It was painful. We eventually found a working model, but it took so long to come up with a plan that we had to push our launch schedule out a few months. When we finally launched, the crowded stores we envisioned sat empty. They, like the rest of the world, were reeling from this new pandemic called COVID-19.  

In this example, I failed to drive consensus before the memo review. Lots of people were involved and giving opinions, but all I did was compile them into a document. What I needed to do was come up with a stronger recommendation on what to do, and get people on the same page prior to reviewing with executives so that we could focus on that recommendation and not on our disagreements. 

As a writer, you cannot expect to be the mouthpiece for others. Business initiatives are huge endeavors and success depends on many pieces working in concert, without your personal involvement every step of the way. Lucky for me, I had many more chances to build new business lines for Amazon, and this was a mistake I wouldn’t repeat again. 

A final note. Is it possible to gain consensus on everything before a big memo review? Of course not! If there are real disagreements, I’ve learned that it’s perfectly okay to state the disagreement in your memo, and offer clear arguments for both sides. These are decisions you can make live in the meeting, and if done well, they are great ways to actually build trust among your team. Amazon calls them ‘hotly debated topics’. More to come in a future post; this is a huge topic after all.

Things that are important but overrated

I can go on about other things that make memos great, but I wanted to address two things that are sometimes mis-understood. I get the following questions a lot: ‘how important are my English skills to writing a good memo’, and ‘can you share document templates.’ 

For English skills - substance matters more than perfect grammar. If you are a non-native English speaker, there’s no reason to avoid written communication if it’s the best way to achieve the business outcome you need. In fact, writing memos is a great way to slow down, take more time, and proofread your work versus trying to deliver the same message verbally or via email. Clear thinking will always trump style. Of course, the reality is that good grammar, usage, and style helps, and it pays to invest in improving your skills. This is again too big for a summary post, but I’ll start with a book recommendation. Please read Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss - you’ll laugh, then you’ll write more fluently. 

For templates - I truly think they are overrated and even dangerous. Most good memos share some common themes. For instance, if you are trying to make a decision, you need to outline the problem you are trying to solve, the options available, and the pro/cons of each of those options. You cannot skip any of these factors, or else there just isn’t enough information to make the decision. It probably doesn’t matter whether you choose to present this decision as a list, or a table, or a set of written scenarios, as long as you’re doing the three important things above.

When people ask me about templates, what they sometimes mean is ‘can you give me a mad-lib so I can just fill in words and let the document write itself’. Unfortunately, no. Templates can be helpful, but don’t use them as a substitute for thinking.

One of the central tenets of this newsletter is that memos are just a means to an end - good business outcomes are more important than good documents. But, good documents will absolutely help you get to the right outcomes. Happy writing and see you next time!