Embracing the Super-power of ‘Effective Writing’ to advance your Executive Presence
Effective writing is not limited to Amazon and its famed 6-page memos.
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We are thrilled to bring you a guest post by Pratik Sharma, Head of Last Mile Product, Strategy, and Delivery Channels for Emerging Countries at Amazon.
Pratik is a published writer with his articles on developmental economics and emerging markets featured in leading international forums. He regularly contributes to global affairs panels and serves on the board of the world's leading South Asian literary festivals. With over 10 years at Amazon, Pratik has led the go-to-market strategy and expansion of Amazon's Last Mile business across 11 international geographies. His role involves frequent presentations to senior leadership on product, strategy, policy, and major brand reputation decisions. His narrative-based leadership communication skills are a culmination of this high visibility, diverse socio-economic experience.
Below, Pratik shares his advice on 3 business writing strategies that will enhance your Executive Presence and accelerate your career.
Apply to be featured as a guest post: If you are an expert and want to share actionable career advice with our readers, get in touch.
Jeff Bezos was once asked at an Amazon All Hands if writing dense memos was an effective use of time.
Jeff explained that the process of building written narratives saves teams a ton of re-work down the line, and it elevates the collective wisdom via in-depth ‘truth-seeking’.
In a recent podcast with Lex Fridman, Jeff added: “A document should be written with such clarity that it's like Angels singing from on high."
The power of effective writing is not just limited to Amazon and its famed 6-page memos.
Effective writing enables managers across all companies to develop a consistent and comprehensive communication pathway with leadership.
This is important because most mid-level managers get limited windows of communication with senior leaders, and in a high-speed, low attention span environment every chance counts.
Despite this, many managers struggle with poorly written communication that opens more questions than answers and creates ambiguity, extra work, and adverse business/career outcomes.
Here are 3 key business writing strategies you can use to communicate more effectively and enhance your Executive Presence:
Be an Insightful storyteller.
Know your Key Readers & Preempt their concerns.
Avoid Anxiety Boosting (partially complete) Communication.
1) Be Insightful, and tell a story
(Essential for Strategic Documents, Memos, Pitch Proposals, Funding Requests, and Promotion Requests): In strategic documents, leaders seek more than just a compilation of facts or a dry presentation of data. They desire insights, nuanced perspectives, and opinions that trigger discussion on difficult/fundamental questions.
To achieve this level of communication, authors must reflect on:
What story are we aiming to tell?
What key takeaways do we want the readers to internalize?
What decisions should readers be prepared to make based on the information presented?
Structuring the storyline around these questions enables authors to construct a compelling argument and explain “why” certain actions should be taken, not just focus on “what” is happening. By focusing on the "why" while addressing the "what", your narratives will go beyond mere information delivery, and serve as catalysts for change, inspiring readers and driving the desired strategic objectives.
In most business scenarios, the authors know the entire transaction/episode/initiative and are tempted to tell the tale ‘As-is’. This framework is easy for authors, but it puts the onus of analysis on the readers. It also creates business risk by leaving the window open for various reader interpretations. I do not recommend this writing style for leadership communications.
On the contrary, although it’s harder for authors to blend their business acumen with empirical evidence to render a concise yet comprehensive story, Executive readers are more likely to appreciate this. Authors will find improved reader stickiness with insightful narratives as leaders will find it to be an effective use of their time. I often explain this as obliging your leadership to watch the long-repeat telecast of a sports game to draw conclusions, vs serving them with well-curated highlights & efficient analysis of the game.
Example:
Transactional Writing (ineffective): “We have updated the Pricing for our offering in Japan by $5 per customer on June 5th.”
Insightful Writing (effective): “As a follow-up to our last discussion, and in line with leadership feedback to address our profitability concerns in Japan, we added a $5 surcharge to our pricing on June 5th. We believe this will streamline the customer cohort distribution to meet our desired goal of 15% increase in per-user revenue by EoY24. We have developed metrics (seen in Appendix 1 on page 7) to measure the monthly per-user revenue, and have seen a +350 bps gain since the launch. We will review the learnings from the pricing change and needed marketing investments (if any) with leadership as part of the upcoming business review on July 7th. “
2) Know Your Key Readers & Preempt their Concerns
(Essential for most forms of Written Communications – strategic documents, leadership emails, broad audience updates): Inspiring reader trust is critical to driving desired outcomes. While this sounds intuitive, most authors make repeated mistakes by failing to embrace the readers' perspectives. It is imperative to identify the key target readers, envision the worldview from their lens, and enrich the narratives in order to address their perspectives. Furthermore, it is also crucial to acknowledge and prioritize the distinct preferences of your key readers. Some are driven by numerical data and require detailed cost breakdowns while others are detail-oriented and need clear next steps, designated responsibilities, and follow-up plans.
Authors must consider the key personas in their audience, and ensure the narratives are well rounded towards their specific needs in order to establish reader trust. This does not imply writing bespoke content for different sets of readers, but instead striking a delicate balance and concurrently meeting the requirements of a diverse set of readers.
I often find it useful to assess the following:
Are we providing too little or too much context?
Are we inundating the reader with jargon and excessive working level/technical details? Will this disengage them?
Are we presenting novel and valuable findings or merely reiterating information they already know?
It is essential to calibrate the narratives with the contextual depth of the business audience being addressed. The benchmark of a good narrative is one that educates, engages, provokes (if needed), and answers the majority of the fundamental questions the audience may have as they engage with the narrative.
Below is an example catering to a detail-oriented reader persona.
Unconscious Writing (ineffective): We failed to meet the deadline for our deployment in Australia in May and have identified a path to green to complete the changes in June.
Key Reader Aware Writing (effective): We failed to meet the deadline for our deployment in Australia in May due to delays (by 7 days) in final user acceptance testing for the payments module. We have identified a path to green to complete the changes by June 9th, by enabling a localized user acceptance testing framework. Next steps: Onboard local user personas for testing (ETA: June 1st, Owner: XX, Status: Green).
3) Avoid Anxiety Boosting (Partially Complete) Communication
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