From "Me" to "Us": Crossing the Bridge from Academic to Business Writing

AS CONSULTANTS teaching writing in Fortune 500 companies, we regularly hear complaints from people whose bosses have sent them to one of our writing programs. Recently, Elizabeth, a young woman in a good entry-level job with an international consulting firm, broke down in class and rushed from the room. Later, when we had a private moment to discuss what had happened, she tearfully lamented, "I did so well in my college writing! " She had come to see herself as a confident and successful writer of essays, reports, term papers, and other forms of academic writing. Her professors had praised her. What had gone wrong? Since Elizabeth had arrived a few months earlier at her first corporate job, she had heard a great many complaints about her writing from her manager. This manager frequently told Elizabeth to rewrite documents which she had felt were finished. Worse yet, the manager often rewrote much of her work, inflicting his style on her writing. The final blow to her pride came when her boss insisted that she sign up for a writing course offered by the company. Sitting in the course was stressful for Elizabeth. Having to endure our well-intentioned suggestions for improvements in her writing had seemed the final insult. She felt as if she could not tolerate one more criticism of her writing. Confidence was rapidly slipping away. Years of developing her own "voice" and "style" seemed wasted. She did not know whom to blame - her professors for misleading her about her ability in college, her present boss for not recognizing that everyone has an individual style, or her new writing coaches who wanted her to give up her own style. Such responses are typical of fledgling corporate writers fresh from BA, BBA, and even MBA programs. We know from eighteen years of conducting corporate training around the country that Elizabeth's predicament is far from unique. Few of our courses proceed without participants either sharing similar woes or expressing cynicism about what they have had to surrender to write "the way they want me to write here. " Employees new to corporations and other large institutions often undergo genuine frustration the first few times they have to write a report, important memo, customer letter, or other document. Although considered bright and well trained in their colleges and graduate schools, young staff members are not accustomed to the particular challenges of writing in a hierarchical structure. Not only do we hear the complaints of these young business recruits, we also hear the criticism of the managers who send these younger writers into the course. One particular executive comes to mind. "Why do I have to be here until eleven o'clock at night rewriting stuff my staff should be able to write? " This senior vicepresident lamented that people "don't learn how to write any more. " What were the problems? "No sense of purpose . rambling, disorganized writing . no understanding of tone . no political savvy about the audience . even the grammar stinks! " New corporate writers need to learn an efficient way to produce documents. The approach they learned in college - an approach which asked them to rely on their own feelings, thoughts, and style - needs to change to an approach which stresses speed, fluency, purposefulness, reader awareness, and "political" sensitivity. A manager has the responsibility to model good writing and to provide instruction in a writing process that serves corporate or institutional ends. And the new employee rarely knows how to shift gears to write in a business environment. Managers have two primary choices: teach the employee themselves or bring in a writing professional. The Source of the Problem Universities teach one kind of writing; corporations teach another. And that's as it should be, but not all young people have the experience to know that they require a structured transition from one to the other. …