Four ways to improve writing

If (when?) you identify that there is room for improvement in your writing, what should you do?

Here are some signs that you should improve your writing.

1. Your boss or colleague or a client tells you so. I suspect that this is rare: not because there are only a few accountants with room to improve their writing but because bosses and clients are more polite than that. More likely there will be an absence of positive comments rather than the presence of negative feedback.
2. The recipients of your writing ask questions that you thought your document had answered. Or they ask for it to be structured in a different way.
3. You discover recipients don’t read what you send them.
4. You receive documents from other finance people and are impressed by how well technical material is explained and data is illustrated in charts and tables.

If (when?) you identify that there is room for improvement in your writing, what should you do? Here are some ideas:

✅ Get some training in business writing and practice your new skills as much as you can.

✅ Get a coach to work with you on a one-to-one basis.

✅ Hire an editor to improve the documents you write.

✅ Hire a ghost writer to write documents for you.

I can help you with the last three of these. Contact me if you are interested.