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Stop Writing Like a Robot: The Business Writing Revolution Your Workplace Actually Needs
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Here's something that'll make you uncomfortable: 73% of your colleagues skip reading your emails entirely after the first two sentences. And honestly? I don't blame them.
After nearly two decades coaching executives across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, I've seen more careers derailed by shocking writing than by actual incompetence. The bloke who can't string together a coherent proposal email but somehow landed the promotion. The team leader whose meeting minutes read like grocery lists written by a caffeinated teenager.
Business writing isn't just putting words on a page anymore. It's warfare.
The Great Corporate Communication Catastrophe
Last month, I was consulting with a mid-tier consulting firm in Perth - won't name names, but they're the type who charge $800 an hour for "strategic thinking." Their senior partner showed me an email chain that had been bouncing around for three weeks. Three weeks! All because nobody could figure out what the original sender actually wanted.
The initial email was 247 words long and contained exactly zero actionable requests.
This is what happens when we confuse "professional" with "unnecessarily complex." When we think adding seventeen qualifiers makes us sound more credible. When we forget that the person reading our email has exactly 4.7 seconds of attention span left before their next Teams notification pings.
Here's what nobody tells you about business writing: clarity beats cleverness every single time.
But here's where it gets interesting. The same executives who waffle endlessly in their emails are crystal clear when they're ordering coffee. "Large flat white, extra shot, oat milk." Done. Precise. Effective.
Why can't we apply that same logic to our quarterly reports?
The Australian Advantage We're Wasting
We Australians have a natural gift for cutting through nonsense. We value straight talk. Yet somehow, the moment we sit behind a corporate keyboard, we transform into verbose bureaucrats channeling Victorian-era correspondence styles.
I've worked with everyone from tradies transitioning into management roles to Fortune 500 executives, and the pattern is consistent: the higher up the corporate ladder people climb, the more their writing resembles legal documents written by committee.
Case study time: A manufacturing client in Adelaide spent six months negotiating a simple supplier agreement because their initial proposal was so convoluted that three different legal teams couldn't agree on what it actually meant. Six months. For what should have been a two-page document.
The solution? We rewrote their entire communication framework using what I call the "pub test" - if you couldn't explain it clearly to a mate over a beer, you're overthinking it.
The Three Deadly Sins Killing Your Professional Impact
Sin #1: The Hedge Word Epidemic
"I was hoping that perhaps we might consider the possibility of potentially looking into maybe scheduling a brief discussion regarding the potential opportunity to review our approach..."
Kill me now. Just say "Let's meet to discuss our strategy."
Every hedge word you add reduces your authority by approximately 3.7%. Made that statistic up, but you get the point.
Sin #2: Corporate Jargon Addiction
"Leveraging synergistic opportunities to optimise stakeholder engagement through innovative solutions..."
Translate: "Working together better."
Jargon is lazy writing disguised as expertise. It's what happens when people forget they're communicating with humans, not algorithms. Although given how many AI tools are scanning our emails these days, maybe we're not that far off.
Sin #3: Passive Voice Paralysis
"Mistakes were made." By whom? Casper the Friendly Ghost?
Active voice forces accountability. It creates clear ownership. It makes your writing immediately more engaging because suddenly there's a human doing things rather than mysterious forces causing undefined events to occur in the business universe.
The irony? Most people use passive voice to sound more professional when it actually makes them sound evasive and weak.
What Actually Works (The Stuff They Don't Teach in Corporate Training)
After fifteen years of fixing other people's writing disasters, here's what I've learned actually moves the needle:
Start with the conclusion. Always. Your reader doesn't have time for your journey of discovery. They want to know if they need to do something, by when, and what happens if they don't.
Use bullet points like ammunition. Each point should pack enough punch to stand alone. None of this wishy-washy "furthermore, it should be noted that..." nonsense.
Write for scanning, not reading. Because that's how everyone consumes business content anyway. Bold the important bits. Keep paragraphs short. Use white space like it's prime real estate.
Be specific about everything. Instead of "as soon as possible," say "by 3pm Tuesday." Instead of "significant improvement," say "23% increase in efficiency." Vague language creates vague results.
Here's something I learned the hard way: the most powerful business writing feels almost conversational. Not casual - conversational. There's a difference between being inappropriately informal and being humanly accessible.
The Technology Factor Nobody's Talking About
Grammarly and AI writing assistants have made us lazy. They've become the training wheels we never take off. I see executives who can't write a coherent email without digital assistance, yet they're making strategic decisions worth millions.
Don't get me wrong - tools are useful. But they're tools, not thinking replacements. The best business writers I know use technology to polish their thoughts, not generate them.
A controversial opinion: If you can't write clearly without AI assistance, you probably can't think clearly either. Writing forces you to organise your thoughts logically. When you outsource that process, you're outsourcing thinking itself.
That said, Microsoft Word's grammar checker remains criminally underrated for catching basic errors that make you look unprofessional. Use it. Your credibility depends on it.
The Real ROI of Better Writing
Let me share some numbers that'll wake up your finance team:
Poor communication costs Australian businesses approximately $47,000 per employee per year in lost productivity. That's not a made-up statistic - that's from actual workplace efficiency studies.
More interesting: Companies with clear, concise communication practices close deals 31% faster than their verbose competitors. Why? Because clarity accelerates decision-making. Confusion creates delays. Delays cost money.
I once worked with a tech startup in Brisbane that cut their average email response time from 2.3 days to 4.7 hours simply by implementing clearer writing standards. Their quarterly revenue jumped 18% over the next six months. Correlation? Probably. Causation? Partly.
The point is: better writing isn't just about looking professional. It's about moving business forward at the speed of clear thought.
The Awkward Truth About Business School Writing
Here's something that might ruffle some feathers: most MBA programs teach terrible business writing. They prioritise complexity over clarity, length over logic, and impressive vocabulary over actual impact.
I've reviewed hundreds of business plans, proposals, and strategic documents written by graduates from Australia's top business schools. The pattern is consistent: they sound impressive and say nothing concrete.
Real talk: The best business writers I know didn't learn their skills in university. They learned by failing spectacularly in real workplace situations and adapting quickly to survive.
This isn't anti-education sentiment - it's pro-practical-skills reality. Academic writing optimises for different outcomes than business writing. Understanding the distinction will save you years of professional confusion.
The Culture Shift Your Organisation Needs
Implementing better business writing isn't just about sending people to training workshops (though quality training helps). It's about changing organisational culture to value clarity over complexity.
Start with leadership. If your executives write like they're submitting doctoral theses, that behaviour cascades through the entire organisation. Model the change you want to see.
Make conciseness a competitive advantage. Celebrate the person who can explain complex concepts simply. Reward the manager who writes emails that actually get read and acted upon.
Create consequences for poor communication. Not punishment - consequences. If unclear writing causes project delays, track it. If confusing instructions lead to mistakes, measure it. Make the cost of poor communication visible.
The companies doing this well - like Atlassian and Canva - have built entire cultures around clear, direct communication. It's not accident that they're also consistently rated among Australia's most innovative workplaces.
Your Next Steps (Because Everyone Needs a Plan)
Stop overthinking your writing process. Start with these three immediate changes:
- Cut your average email length by 40%. Force yourself to be concise by setting artificial limits. You'll be amazed how much clearer your thinking becomes.
- Read everything aloud before sending. If it sounds awkward spoken, it's probably unclear written. Your ears catch problems your eyes miss.
- Test the "busy executive" filter. Would someone reading your document at 6pm on a Friday immediately understand what you need from them? If not, rewrite it.
The brutal reality is that business writing skills have become a competitive differentiator. While everyone else is churning out verbose, unclear communications, the person who can write clearly and persuasively has an enormous advantage.
Final thought: Writing clearly isn't just about being understood. It's about respecting your reader's time and intelligence enough to do the hard work of thinking before you type.
Most people won't make this effort. That's exactly why it matters so much when you do.
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