Only When the Words Outdo the Silence

I recently picked up a new book called Rework based on a blog post recommendation by a friend of mine.  Or, it might have been a tweet.  Who knows these days, right?  Right.

Seth Godin is quoted on the cover – “Ignore this book at your own peril.”  From what I’ve read so far, this isn’t surprising.  The chapters are anything but chapters.  They’re short, crisp ideas lacking any sort of fluff.  Straight to the point.  Wisdom in scarcity.  Finality of tone.  Extended proverbs?

There is a chapter entitled, “Hire the Better Writer,” that made me raise up and say, “Yes! I agree!”  If two candidates are equally qualified, then I choose based on the better writer.  I’ve heard many people say, “Cover letters are a waste of time,” but I entirely disagree.  You can fake a resume.  You can load it up with all of those action verbs and business buzzwords.  That’s easy.  But you can’t get around being a poor communicator in a cover letter and, as the chapter states, clear writing is a sign of clear thinking.  Basically, good writing shows good, structured thinking

Hire Great Writers

If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position, hire the best writer.  It doesn’t matter if that person is a marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer or whatever; their writing skills will pay off.

That’s because being a good writer is about more than just writing.  Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking.  Great writers know how to communicate.  They make things easy to understand.  They can put themselves in someone else’s shoes.  They know what to omit.  And those are qualities you want in any candidate.

Writing is making a comeback all over our society.  Look at how much people e-mail and text message now rather than talk on the phone.  Look at how much communication happens via instant messaging and blogging.  Writing is today’s currency for good ideas.

Good writing and clear thinking is needed in a field like search.  Everyone plays within the same rules set.  We all play in the same sandbox.  The difference in quality from one company to the next is in the emphasis of the different facets of on-site and off-site SEO, for example, and the creation and application of unique ideas.  It’s knowing what to omit from a report in order to make your successes easier to understand.

One last note on writing and jobs involving the internet.  If you’re applying for a job that involves the internet, it would behoove you to create a WordPress, Blogspot, Tumblr, Typepad or et cetera blog with your name in the URL.  That way, when you’re Googled the blog pops up and allows the employer to get a better idea of how you think, what you think about, what you think about the things related to your potential job and who you are as a person.

…in the business world.  There are those who are able to cut through the thicket of thesaurus words growing from the mouths of others and provide a single sentence that captures the entirety of the idea and instigates action. And why not?  Meetings are so often derailed by attendees veering off into topics that do not speak to the issue; a finely expressed goal keeps a project on target; time is money; time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana; and so on…  The ironic thing is that management is usually conducted in -isms, -tions and -ents; vague words that are stultifying.  So what to do?  Lead the way and speak in Anglo-Saxon, not Latin.  From an article on The American Scholar website:

First, a little history. The English language is derived from two main sources. One is Latin, the florid language of ancient Rome. The other is Anglo-Saxon, the plain languages of England and northern Europe. The words derived from Latin are the enemy—they will strangle and suffocate everything you write. The Anglo-Saxon words will set you free.

How do those Latin words do their strangling and suffocating? In general they are long, pompous nouns that end in -ion—like implementation and maximization and communication (five syllables long!)—or that end in -ent—like development and fulfillment. Those nouns express a vague concept or an abstract idea, not a specific action that we can picture—somebody doing something. Here’s a typical sentence: “Prior to the implementation of the financial enhancement.” That means “Before we fixed our money problems.”

Believe it or not, this is the language that people in authority in America routinely use—officials in government and business and education and social work and health care. They think those long Latin words make them sound important. It no longer rains in America; your TV weatherman will tell that you we’re experiencing a precipitation probability situation.

One of my favorite posters at a message board I’ve frequented since 2000 added a link on management to the business forum.  It covers a topic I’d like to see fully covered in a book and might have a title like: Drucker and Hume walk into a Starbucks: Management Explained through Philosophy.  The fellow who wrote the article, Michael Stewart, also wrote a book called The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza and the Fate of God in the Modern World (the title is a mouthful, but the actual writing and content isn’t as pompous as the title sounds) which is a solid read.  Here is an excerpt of the article entitled The Management Myth:

Beyond building skills, business training must be about values. As I write this, I know that my M.B.A. friends are squirming in their seats. They’ve all been forced to sit through an “ethics” course, in which they learned to toss around yet more fancy phrases like “the categorical imperative” and discuss borderline criminal behavior, such as what’s a legitimate hotel bill and what’s just plain stealing from the expense account, how to tell the difference between a pat on the shoulder and sexual harassment, and so on. But, as anyone who has studied Aristotle will know, “values” aren’t something you bump into from time to time during the course of a business career. All of business is about values, all of the time. Notwithstanding the ostentatious use of stopwatches, Taylor’s pig iron case was not a description of some aspect of physical reality—how many tons can a worker lift? It was a prescription—how many tons should a worker lift? The real issue at stake in Mayo’s telephone factory was notfactual—how can we best establish a sense of teamwork? It was moral—how much of a worker’s sense of identity and well-being does a business have a right to harness for its purposes?

“It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites — opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity — where energies flow smoothly in one direction — there will be much doing, but no music.”

-Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

Quoted in Beware the IN Crowd: Diverse Groups are Wiser, Kinder and Higher-Performing.