Diaries aside, what you write is not for you. It is for your readers. Your writing should be so clear and succinct that it glides through their eyes. If you make readers reread or decipher, the one thing you are sure to inspire is resentment. A memo will go to the bottom of the pile; a book will be closed and forgotten.
There are two traditional nemeses of good writing. An overwrought vocabulary encourages you to "enumerate materials before commencing to undertake an endeavor," when "listing things before getting started" will do just fine. Such vocabulary often metastasizes into sentences that kill your readership.
The other danger is laziness, using the same threadbare words and phrases your peers do. Writing "state–of–the–art," "robust," "acid test," "going forward," or "low–hanging fruit," for example, is like felling a tree. You won’t know if it makes a sound when it hits the ground, because even if people are there, no one will be listening.
In writing seminars, a client sometimes offers a lumbering grammatical monstrosity. I ask, "What does it mean?" Whereupon he explains clearly, in small words and economical sentences. I advise: “Write that instead.”
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We place a heavy emphasis on implementation to ensure that the chosen strategy realizes business benefits. Successful implementation requires a thorough and well–executed communications plan, careful team building, detailed project planning and effective project management, and education of employees. We measure business results to ensure that established goals are met.
Executing our business strategy is important. We plan it carefully, and train our staff so that they manage the project effectively. We measure the results of our plan to be sure it is successful.
I will collect retrospective reports from subjects to better understand the cognitive processes subjects use while working through the tasks. This methodology is well–suited for this study for several reasons; first, the semi–structured interviews will provide rich, naturalistic data about the individuals’ understanding of the concepts and experience with the task. Second, this method is consistent with the assumption that the meaning people make of their experience is essential to gaining insight into how individuals develop and learn.
I will ask people to perform some tasks. Afterwards I will ask them what they were thinking while they were doing the tasks. Asking people questions is a good way to find out what they’re thinking, which helps us understand how they learn.