Re: Writing in the workplace (long)

[Barbara Shwom <bshwom@nwu.edu>]

In response to Paula's and Jon's postings about writing in the workplace:

This has prompted me to come out of lurkerdom once again.

I do a lot of work with workplace writers. For about the past 15 years,
I've run a small consulting company that provides writing training and
other kinds of communication consulting to large and small businesses. I've
worked with managers, CEOs, secretaries--and every level in between.

To be honest, what strikes me is how strong the parallels are between
teaching writing for school and teaching writing for the workplace.  On
WCenter we've talked many times about faculty in other disciplines who
believe that teacher writing means teaching grammar. We can explain all we
want about the relationship between writing and thinking--and controlling
the writing process--but they still think that grammar is the key. Things
aren't that much different in the workplace.

It's true that many workplace managers also say that good grammar is what's
important and makes the difference in workplace writing. And that is, in
part, because employees aren't writing very much and just need to make a
good showing on the short memos and emails.  But, as Paula's daughter Leigh
points out, one reason many people aren't writing very much may be that
they don't have the higher order concerns under control. They can't handle
the longer documents, the ones that require thinking about how to handle
multiple audiences and how to use writing to achieve business goals. Those
documents are given to the better writers

I'm assuming that we want *our* college/university students to *be* the
better writers--the ones who are called upon to write these longer
documents. Those writers need to understand audience, purpose, organization
as much as--or more than--people who are writing essays in college. Most
importantly, they need to understand how to write for readers who are not
"paid" to read their writing, as teachers are.  And this understanding
makes them not only better writers of long documents, but also better
writers of short emails and memos.

Last week, I did a seminar for a small consulting company in the health
care industry that hires some of our country's best and brightest. Most of
the participants were fairly recent college grads.  At one point in the
seminar, I asked them how many people had spent some time on the phone over
the last few weeks answering follow-up questions about memos and emails
they had written: about 3/4 said they had. When we analyzed the kinds of
questions they discussed on the phone, many came to realize that they got
these questions because the readers were  confused by emails, memos and
short letters they had received. In some cases, the readers simply decided
not to read the pieces. The messages were too hard to figure out, so
instead they called the writer to figure out what was going on.

But until that discussion, no one even  correlated the fact that the reason
they might have spent five hours on the phone explaining how to administer
a survey is that the brief memo explaining the process to the field
managers was simply unclear.  It wasn't, to their mind, a writing problem.

In contrast to what Jon said, I think "the matters we often link with
careful thinking
("higher order concerns" of organizational unity, coherence, development)"
are a concern; they are what help people get ahead. So, one possible
question to ask oursevles is this: In our teaching should we be focusing on
the minimum people need to get by in the workplace--enough good grammar
that they don't embarass themselves and their employers? Or should we be
focusing on the things they need to be efficient and to move their careers
and companies ahead? And can we give them both?

As I said before, to my mind, this question isn't that different from what
we think about when we teach people to write for school.

Paula and Jon, thanks for starting this conversation. It certainly got me
thinking this Monday morning.

--Barbara









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Barbara Shwom
Northwestern University
The Writing Program
1902 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208
Phone: 847/491-7690
Fax: 847/328-5536
Email: bshwom@nwu.edu
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