Chicago Booth Review Podcast Writing Matters. Here's How to Get Better at It.

Melissa Harris: And I learned something about how, maybe not so much how to be a better writer, but how to be a better leader, how to be a better person at work, how to be a better person to my colleagues. It's not really about writing. It's about writing in a professional setting to avoid mistakes and hopefully get to a promotion faster.

Hal Weitzman: Most managers would agree that communication is important, and many would also agree that it's a skill that many workers are far from mastering. Yet, organizations typically spend next to no time training their employees how to improve their writing.

Welcome to the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, where we bring you ground-breaking insights in a clear and straightforward way. I'm Hal Weitzman, and in this episode, we are hearing from Melissa Harris, an adjunct assistant professor of entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth, a former Chicago Tribune journalist, and the co-author of the new book, Everybody Needs an Editor: The Essential Guide to Clear and Effective Writing. Harris shared her expertise on everything that's wrong with business writing from jargon to clichés to generic messages, what to do about it, and why even she needs an editor.

Melissa Harris, welcome to the Chicago Booth Review Podcast.

Melissa Harris: Thanks, Hal. It's great to see you again.

Hal Weitzman: Well, I'm very excited about this conversation. You are one of the authors of this book, Everybody Needs an Editor. How true. But let's get into it. Where did this come from in the first place? Why did you feel the need to put this into a book?

Melissa Harris: Because people are writing too long, too much, and you want to know why? It's because writing shorter is harder. But here's the scary truth. The average human's attention span according to some studies is eight seconds. I mean, have we lost [inaudible 00:02:00].

Hal Weitzman: Sorry, I just lost you there.

Melissa Harris: Did you lose me? [inaudible 00:02:03].

Hal Weitzman: Just repeat that

Melissa Harris: Clicked off already?

Hal Weitzman: Yes, probably. Hopefully not. Hopefully not all of them, but yes, so we have a very short attention span and yet, so why did we not... I mean, writing's been around forever, well, not forever, but since for a long, long time. Why have we not clocked that distinction because it's not like, do you think our attention span is eight seconds now? But if you went back 200 years, our attention span was eight hours. I mean, so we've always had quite a short attention span, haven't we?

Melissa Harris: I think the reason that writing is so difficult, let's make an analogy to a piano player. If you don't want to put in the time to practice the piano, then you just don't play piano. Whereas with writing, we all have to write, whether we've practiced it or made it a part of our discipline and our passion or not. It's like everyone when it comes to writing gets put on a Carnegie Hall stage, yet only a fraction of us treat it as a discipline and skill to be worked on and honed. And I think that's the reason we haven't gotten to it yet.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. But I mean, why writing specifically? So obviously, we do write and maybe you could argue we write more than ever before. We're writing text messages and emails, obviously, and Slack messages and everything else, but a lot of research suggests that actually, we shouldn't be writing so much. So why are you kind of focusing on writing as opposed to just communication in general?

Melissa Harris: The book does cover a lot of topics including the spoken word, but in general, we think that every communicator needs to take a and writer needs to take a tip from the design world and the concept is called skim and dive. When you look at a website, you need to have it written so that someone can simply skim it, great headlines, great subheads, and then you need to also write it so that your most passionate fans and potential customers and the people who care the most can dive. So you need to write in both manners, in all forms of communication in order to attract new fans and new followers and new customers as well as serve those who are already in your corner.

Hal Weitzman: Okay, but I mean, do you think in general we do depend too much on writing because my general impression is that particularly... I mean, I'm of a certain generation, Melissa, and that particularly younger employees are more comfortable writing. They're more comfortable putting stuff... I mean, I have teenage kids in my house. They're much more comfortable writing than actually calling people. I mean, you and I used to work at newspapers where you would actually call people and there was a reason you called them rather than emailed them because you would get better information if you spoke to them. And we have good research coming out of Chicago Booth that shows exactly that. You get a better sense of people if you speak to them than if you message them. So do we use writing too much do you think?

Melissa Harris: Yes, and in fact in the book, we have a specific entry that walks through all the situations where you should not be writing. Let me tell you a few of them that I get as a CEO. You should not be writing when you are asking for a raise. You should not be writing when you are quitting. You should not be writing when you are asking for a promotion. At the same time, because of the new digital tools in our arsenal, we're writing now more than ever.

It used to be how when you and I were in the newspaper business, we would just have to write an article and then we were done. And then it grew when you and I were still in the business till we had to write an article and we had to write a post for Twitter and Facebook and now we have to write a post for LinkedIn. And although TikTok is a video platform, you still have to write some stuff on it. And then, oh, by the way, now journalists today have to write copy for the newsletters. So we have to get better at writing while also understanding that important conversations must be handled in person.

Hal Weitzman: I mean, just to play devil's advocate, a lot of the writing, so you talk about newsletters and things, obviously those are important, but a lot of writing is quick, Slack type messages, instant messages where people know that there are things that aren't quite right about them. Of course, miscommunication is a different issue, but just that the quality of writing is not that important. What do you think?

Melissa Harris: I love a good emoji. I love a good emoji.

Hal Weitzman: Who doesn't?

Melissa Harris: I love a good GIF. I have a particular favorite of the Full House, like sending happy birthday gifts to people of the kids from Full House like dancing. Schitt's Creek gifts are among also my pantheon of greatness. But I'm also a faculty member here at Chicago Booth. I teach Building a New Venture, which is an entrepreneurship course in the executive MBA program. And one of my assignments was asking students for a bio of themselves, a simple bio. I got two back out of the 60 with emojis in the bio. There are still places where formal communication is necessary and I think our job at Chicago Booth, even though it's business school, is to train people for those formal moments where it really matters.

Hal Weitzman: Just out of interest, so you said two of them used emojis. What were the others? Would you consider them to be well-written? Did people have their story down? Did they know how to express themselves, articulate who they were?

Melissa Harris: No. I had one bio where the opening sentence came in at 75 words.

Hal Weitzman: That's too long.

Melissa Harris: It was the length of a paragraph.

Hal Weitzman: All right, so tell me something. I mean-

Melissa Harris: And the use of jargon. I have now you're getting me in my sweet spot.

Hal Weitzman: [inaudible 00:08:21].

Melissa Harris: The use of jargon, platform, transition, solution, strategy. No one knows what that means.

Hal Weitzman: Right.

Melissa Harris: And your bio is the way you credential yourself, especially on LinkedIn for any meeting. I mean, anyone worth their salt is going to run you on LinkedIn before they have a critical meeting with you.

Hal Weitzman: Right. So you've talked to, you kind of hinted at something there. It would be very easy for you and me to sit around like two old, what is it, Waldorf and Statler from the Muppets.

Melissa Harris: We're crotchety, Hal. We're crotchety.

Hal Weitzman: And kind of, right, complain about young folk, how bad they are which, of course, has been happening for thousands of years.

Melissa Harris: This was not a young person, by the way.

Hal Weitzman: Okay.

Melissa Harris: These are executive MBA students.

Hal Weitzman: Other people. I mean, and then you open up a whole world of people for us to complain about. But let's focus on the positive. So if we could do what you consider to be good writing or effective writing, what are the benefits? What are the good stuff that happens if we get it right?

Melissa Harris: If you're an entrepreneur, which is who I work with the most, you're going to get more sales calls. You're going to get more leads. You're going to get more likes. You're going to get more fans, and you're going to be able to scale your business quicker. You're going to get more promotions. You're going to get more raises. We hope that this book is used most as a graduation gift. It's the perfect thing for someone to read before they set off in the corporate world. So as one of our items says, "How to write an email so you don't get fired."

Hal Weitzman: Okay, all right. That still sounds a bit too positive. So let's go back to the negative for a second. How bad are we? Generally in the business world, the US business corporate world, how bad are we at writing?

Melissa Harris: I'll give you a C.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. So give us some examples of some of the things that you consider to be ineffective or poor.

Melissa Harris: Jargon is the number one. And what is jargon? It's a word that maybe how you and I would be able to understand. Let's talk about our lead. Let's talk about our head. Well, anyone who wasn't previously a journalist would have no idea what we were talking about or how many picas is that? What's the inch count? You might be able to guess, but you're not going to be sure. Give me your week ahead. That could mean anything. We have to get language that can only be understood by a singular industry or subgroup out of our external facing language. Is that okay in an email to your boss or your colleague? Yes. Is that language okay on your website, in your outbound newsletters, in your advertising? It is not.

Hal Weitzman: So there's a time to use jargon and there's a time not to use it and what is it that people confuse the two?

Melissa Harris: They use how they talk to each other in their external facing language when they talk to their customers. Jargon has no business in external facing language. One thing I try to advise entrepreneurs on this is that you may think you're talking to the engineer who is going to decide whether they buy your product or not, but they have to go talk to finance usually or contracting and go get approval. And if you haven't equipped them to explain this in a way that finance or contracting can understand, you are not going to win that sale. So even when you're talking to "your peers" or your experts, you need to at least have some language ready that will help them explain it to others: HR, finance, contracting, strategy.

Hal Weitzman: Okay, so jargon is the big one. What's another one? What's another example of how bad we are?

Melissa Harris: Clichés. And these are words that just don't mean anything anymore because they're so overused. Innovation, data-driven, digital platform, digital solution. You have to have some others.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. Well, I was just thinking more mundane ones like going forward and space, instead of industry and things like that.

Melissa Harris: For me, it's really-

Hal Weitzman: But as you say, it could be anything that people say a lot within an organization, right? So clichés are dynamic and they get formed all the time.

Melissa Harris: And really where it's most important is when you're thinking about the language that you're trying to use to make you or your company or your product distinct. If you are putting clichés in that precious space where you're trying to differentiate your product from the competitors, you will never do so, data-driven being one of the most frequent that I see. Platform being another. We're a unique platform. I have no idea what that means. We're an innovative company.

Hal Weitzman: Well, it did mean something at one point.

Melissa Harris: At one point, but it does not.

Hal Weitzman: But then everyone else picked up on it.

Melissa Harris: Well, it's a cliché because it's overused. It's overused so much that it doesn't distinguish you.

Hal Weitzman: Right. So that's an interesting example because how would someone identify that it's a cliché and therefore, that it's not making them distinct?

Melissa Harris: We encourage through our messaging process that we do at M. Harris & Co, my marketing agency, that there is a landscape review in advance and you've identified some of those overused and overworked phrases. We try to do that ourselves before we go into messaging sessions so that we know what the four or five bits of language are that everyone else is using and we are ensuring that our clients are not repeating that.

Hal Weitzman: I see. So that's great if they can bring you in, but short of that, they could go and look themselves at their industry.

Melissa Harris: Correct.

Hal Weitzman: And say, "What are the phrases as an industry that we overuse? Let's not use those when we're talking to people who are not in the industry."

Melissa Harris: Or no, when they are to distinguish ourselves from our competitors.

Hal Weitzman: I see. Okay.

Melissa Harris: Both.

Hal Weitzman: I see. Okay. Why do you think... well, I mean, I have some theories about this, but I'm interested in your view. Why do you think we are so bad at writing? Take the jargon, for example. Why is it that people are unable to distinguish between their colleagues who clearly understand the jargon and a customer or someone in the HR department?

Melissa Harris: I have to go back to my point earlier that this is a skill that requires practice and discipline just like any other skill. What does Malcolm Gladwell say? You need 10,000 hours of dedicated time at something to become great at it. And we don't think of it like playing a piano that requires effort and practice and instruction and feedback and learning. We just do it because we have to. It's not an optional skill. And so just simply taking the time to get even feedback on a piece of writing before you submit it or you hit send will be just having one outside eye, which we rarely take the time to do, will improve your writing dramatically because maybe it's a cliché, but everybody does need an editor, but think about how many things you write that you never have edited.

Hal Weitzman: Well, hopefully, it will become a cliché. The book is very successful as it should be, but I'm interested in why that's the case. So I get it that people don't take the time, sort of the equivalent of kind of thinking fast and slow. So people don't take the time, but why is it? Is it just because it's ubiquitous and we're writing all the time so therefore, we don't even think of it as an activity that needs work?

Melissa Harris: I think that's why. I think it's because it is ubiquitous and it is required at a rapid rate. But I would guess... and I'm in an industry where, in a culture and in a business where we're all former journalists, so we do often take that time. I still think probably 90% of what I write every day is never edited.

Hal Weitzman: So you need an editor.

Melissa Harris: Oh my goodness. I sent out a couple emails over the last week that had factual errors in them and I literally had to write back, "Everybody needs an editor, even me." In fact, that's what I wanted to call the book. Our publisher at Simon & Schuster said we needed a more SEO-friendly title, but I need it all the time and if there's anything that I think is even remotely sensitive that I am putting in writing, I am at least asking one of my employees to read behind me. And that's an important culture that we've just created because it flows out of journalism.

My columns, and I bet your work at the Financial Times when you were there, were edited sometimes by three people. If my story in the olden days, which was really important, was appearing on the front page, it would be edited up to by about six people. So there's also a part of this that discipline also requires a humility because you have to have the courage to say, "Hey, will you give this a read?" It's not just the time. You have to realize that maybe you're not the best at this and you need a second pair of eyes.

Hal Weitzman: If you're enjoying this podcast, there's another University of Chicago podcast network show you should check out. It's called Big Brains. Big Brains brings you the stories behind the pivotal scientific breakthroughs and research that are reshaping our world. Change how you see the world and keep up with the latest academic thinking with Big Brains, part of the University of Chicago podcast network.

So Melissa Harris, we're talking to you about your terrific book you co-authored, Everybody Needs an Editor. I'm wondering, so when we were talking, a lot of it was about individuals and maybe I'm pushing you more towards the new recruits and the people who are earlier on in their career. Is this as bad in the C-suite? Is it worse?

Melissa Harris: I think the thing that is worse in the C-suite is the generic-ness of high-level corporate communications. The younger generation is more comfortable expressing their feelings for bad or for worse or putting some emotion into what they're saying for better or for worse. In the book, we quote an email from Microsoft that takes almost five pages. That leaves the fact that there will be layoffs to the second to last paragraph and we rewrite that email in the book showing people how to directly, but yet empathetically, announce the need for layoffs and cuts.

Hal Weitzman: Yeah, layoffs is such an interesting one because if you go on YouTube and take a break from the Chicago Booth Review channel on YouTube and search up layoff videos, CEOs increasingly on Zoom laying off large numbers of people, they're always attacked. It's terrible. So I don't think I've ever seen one that says, where people have said, "Yeah, this was done well." So layoffs is a tricky situation in the first place, right? You're always going to upset people. There's a limit to how much you can really do with it other than perhaps, as you say, conveying the information and why you've made the decision, even if people... well, they won't like it. I just wonder, do you think that some of this is to do with overwriting? Typically in a corporate environment, right, someone drafts something, it goes through legal, it goes through 12 other people, add words and it comes out a bit of a word salad and that's what the CEO ends up presenting.

Melissa Harris: One of my favorite scenes from Moneyball was the scene in which Billy Bean lets go of a, trades a key player, and he had, as a manager, you have to trade lots of people over your career, and he had a two-sentence way of doing it. Now that might be too abrupt, but a Shakespearean soliloquy is also not the way to do it. And we do provide an example of a short but empathetic way of telling people there will be layoffs. That is a very different conversation than "you are fired," right, which should never be done in writing ever. That must be done, in my view, in person.

But the email essentially is we're writing to tell you that in the coming weeks, we will be laying off approximately X percent of our workforce. This is never easy. It's among the hardest things that I will ever have to do as a leader. I want you to understand the three reasons why, reason one, reason two, and conclude with what you are trying to do to ensure this does not have to happen again and to grow the company out. You're looking at four to five paragraphs.

Hal Weitzman: Right, I was just thinking that's the classic, American five-paragraph essay, which a lot of people did learn in school. Why did they not take that through their professional lives? The topic sentences, sort of speaking to the audience, all those things are people... people have been told that. They just haven't practiced it. Why?

Melissa Harris: My guess, it is a factor of fear. It's just that when you're writing your essay in high school, typically fear is probably not the emotion that is at the forefront of your mind. And however, when you are announcing bad news to team members, fear and anxiety are driving those choices. That's also why they say, "Oh, we need to bring in outside voices, outside advisors," but it needs to be the voice of the CEO minus the fear is the best way I can describe it.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. And I mean, we're talking about big announcements. These are the ones that people do sweat about, mergers and layoffs and that kind of thing. Announcements to investors, people get very nervous about that, but really, a lot of it is sort of the day-to-day, isn't it, where people make mistakes and that's where reputations are made or won or lost.

Melissa Harris: Because there are day to day little minor infractions. I think there's a word for them in social psychology. It's like [inaudible 00:22:14] those consistent paper cuts, right, that happen over email because people are careless and they're thoughtless and eventually, someone explodes and does something really, really stupid over email. Our best advice in the book is to send that email to yourself and I have sent a fair number of emails to myself over my career. Send the email to yourself, have that feeling of expressing it or pick up the phone and call.

Hal Weitzman: That's so interesting because one of the complaints that I've heard from people who are getting communications training is time. So there is a book that I read long time ago that was trying to help people deal with stage fights, but it was written by two former actors who recommended that basically, you spend as much time as an actor would on a script. Clearly, these people who've never worked in a real office job. So most people are completely time deprived and they feel that to read over their emails again or to send it to themselves or to have one of those things that delays the email is just a waste of time and it's time they haven't got. How do you convince people that it's not? They actually might be saving time?

Melissa Harris: I hope to God that people are self-aware enough to know when they are angry as they are writing an email. It's not so much what you say. It's almost the emotion that you are feeling as you are doing it. If you are feeling anger, you must stop. When you are writing an email, that emotion does come through on the page. The best advice I can give is to send it to yourself, call the person, or schedule it for the morning so that you do have one more time to look at it before it goes out.

Hal Weitzman: I'm reminded that there used to be a time when you could recall emails and sometimes, people still-

Melissa Harris: Not anymore.

Hal Weitzman: ... sometimes people still try and do that.

Melissa Harris: But I do love the scheduling feature. It gives you a few beats to think about it.

Hal Weitzman: Right. But really, nothing can be recalled. And of course, we're not just talking about emails. We're talking about social media, which has been land minefield for so many individuals and CEOs. I mean, do you advise caution when I mean, just in other words, not using them very much. One thinks if you and I were working at Tesla or any related company, we would be nervous if we were in the communications department about our boss just sending out messages on X all times day and night in all sorts of moods. So what do you-

Melissa Harris: I feel for those people. I do. I have great sympathy for the crisis advisors at Tesla, those poor people. They must be jerked around at all hours.

Hal Weitzman: ... but what do you advise? Because actually, Elon Musk's an interesting example of someone who says, "I don't care what it does to the share price. I'm just going to express myself." Unusual because most CEOs would care. But for those who do care, what do you advise them? Just not to have anything personal on social media online?

Melissa Harris: I think that Elon Musk is one of 0.0000 and almost to infinite 1% of people who have managed to both scale a company while still controlling the company. I can think of maybe only two or three people in the history of the modern world who do not have a boss, whether that's the pension fund that invests, co-invests with the billionaire, whether that's the retirement fund, the CalPERS retirement fund. There are very, very few people in this world who don't have a boss, and I would ask young people who definitely have many, many bosses, "Would you want your boss seeing this tweet or this post or this Instagram or this TikTok? Don't do it if you don't want your boss seeing it."

Hal Weitzman: So it's just be cautious. Yeah, there are companies now that will clean up your record, of course, so you can go and get a respectable job after God knows what you've been doing or tweeting about. You talked earlier about the benefits to individuals. You'll be more effective in your career. You'll get promotions. You'll get raises, hopefully, or you're more likely to get them. Maybe that's the way of saying it, but what about companies? When you go and pitch to companies and say, "We can offer these services or at very least, buy this book for your employees," why should companies care? What's the benefit to a corporation from better writing?

Melissa Harris: When you think about manufacturing, they invest a lot. If you're a manufacturer, you're investing in digital tools, right, to help you be more efficient. Imagine how much more efficient you could be if your communication was clear. How much time are you just spending sometimes communicating in circles to your colleagues? One of my business partner, Jane Hurt, constantly reminds me that if I really want a message to get through to our team, I have to say it 14 times. So if you're not clear and if you're confusing, you've just lost nine of those 14 times. It's all about efficiency and getting to goals.

We have what's called rocks every quarter where we sit and meet with the leadership team and set rocks. These are goals for the quarter that require a bunch of people to achieve them. No one person can achieve them alone. And given it requires a bunch of people, if you cannot communicate clearly over writing, it won't get done. It'll get done late. It'll get done with too much chaos. It's the same principle as almost what is Toyota's just-in-time manufacturing, right? It's all about needing to have those little spare parts and waste, right, in your manufacturing processes. I think the book is about ensuring you have as little waste and wasted time and drama and chaos in your communication.

Hal Weitzman: When you and I were chatting about the book, I kind of made the observation that I love books like this and I used to love Harry Evans, the famous British newspaper editor. His books-

Melissa Harris: I think of Harry Evans, by the way, as the former CEO of Paramount who made The Godfather. So that told you-

Hal Weitzman: This is Harold Evans, the famous Sunday Times editor who wrote excellent books, if you're interested in this kind of thing about headline writing and sharp English and everything else. But I mean, I know that not many people actually read those books and while I hope that the right people read your book, I'm nervous that the people who read it will be the people who don't need it, who actually don't need the book or need an editor less or know they need an editor and those who don't read it are actually the ones who need the editing.

Melissa Harris: The right people will not read this book unless their professor assigns it, unless their manager or boss assigns it, unless their grandma, aunt or uncle or mom give it to them as a graduation gift and order them to read it. I'm keenly aware that the act of buying this book requires a level of humility that you have room to improve. However, I even learned from this book and I have been a writer or writing has been the core of my career since I was 15 years old and wrote my first article for a newspaper. And I learned something about how maybe not so much how to be a better writer, but how to be a better leader, how to be a better person at work, how to be a better person to my colleagues. It's not really about writing. It's about writing in a professional setting to avoid mistakes and hopefully get to a promotion faster.

Hal Weitzman: So Melissa, let's finish on a positive, constructive note. What would be three tips you would give to our listeners to improve their writing starting today?

Melissa Harris: Cut the jargon. Use the return key. Back up your statements with proof. Show, don't tell. Prove it. You're not a transformational leader. Explain to me what you have transformed and what the impact of that transformation has been on your revenue, on your team members, on your life. Prove it. Show, don't tell.

Hal Weitzman: Okay, excellent. Well, Melissa Harris, everybody needs an editor, and now you've proved it by writing an excellent book that is very useful for all sorts of people and I hope that those who need it really will read it. Thanks for joining us on the Chicago Booth Review Podcast. It's been a lot of fun.

Melissa Harris: Thanks, Hal.

Hal Weitzman: That's it for this episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, part of the University of Chicago Podcast Network. For more research, analysis, and insights, visit our website at chicagobooth.edu/review. When you're there, sign up for our weekly newsletter so you never miss the latest in business-focused academic research. This episode was produced by Josh Stunkel. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and please do leave us a five-star review. Until next time, I'm Hal Weitzman. Thanks for listening.