The Business of Writing - Lundquist College of Business - University ...

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4 WrItE for BUSINESS With the onslaught of communications in the world today, good writing skills are more important than ever for professional and business success. Phil Jones ’07 is smart. He scored high on the SAT and entered the Lundquist College of Business with a stratospheric GPA. He even earned Advanced Placement credit for college courses while in high school. So he figured a college business writing class would be a cinch. After all, anybody who studied Latin shouldn’t have a problem writing an office memo. Guess again. In his time in Eugene, Jones learned there’s more to business writing than big words and understanding Germanic roots. “The writing training I received through the Leadership and Communication Center at the Lundquist College of Business showed me that to be an effective writer, you need to be concise, clear, and know how to structure an argument,” he said. Corporate America needs more business school graduates like Phil Jones ’07.
Today, Jones works at Nike, where he uses his writing skills daily. Corporate America wishes it had more employees like Jones. A 2004 survey by the National Commission on Writing estimated that businesses spend as much as $3.1 billion per year on remedial training for employees with poor writing skills. Similarly, a study by management gurus L. W. Porter and L. W. McKibbin concluded that most business school graduates have poor communication skills and are, therefore, ineffective leaders. With e-mails and text messages replacing face-to-face meetings and phone calls, the drag on the economy from poor writing skills is expected to get worse. The Leadership and Communication Center is the Lundquist College of Business answer to the problem. “Our job as a business school is to help students transition from academic to professional,” said Ron Bramhall, an instructor with the center. The Leadership and Communication Center helps students develop leadership, teamwork, ethics, and communication skills. “WHEN YOU GET A RESUME OR AN E - MAIL FROM SOMEONE INq UIRING ABOUT A POSITION AND THERE ARE TYPING OR SPELLING ERRORS AND IT’ S NOT PUT TOGETHER WELL, IT DOESN’ T COME ACROSS AS PROFESSIONAL. IT SENDS A MESSAGE.” —Doreen Grove, Human Resources Manager, U.S. Bank. Because good communication is essential to effective leadership, Bramhall and his peers—instructors Anne Forrestel, Chuck Kalnbach, Ron Severson, and Jeff Stolle—emphasize the fundamentals of good writing: correct spelling, proper grammar, coherent organization, relentless revision. But business writing also has its own nuances, and the center highlights those differences. “There are certain aspects to writing that are definite, but other aspects in which the answer is, ‘It depends,’” said Severson, who helps design the center’s writing curriculum. While great novels can be built on ambiguity and wordplay, a business plan that is vague will struggle to get funding, he explained. The choice of medium is also critical. Instant messages are great for quick business, but not ideal for communicating a major strategy shift. Similarly, “stickiness” is critical to business writing. For Severson, that means making sure “your ideas are understood and remembered and change your audience’s opinions or behaviors.” Rachel Garret ’08 shares some writing pointers with Brad Clum ’08. 55
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