The Writing of Business Chapter 1: Managing Complexity and Risk with GRACE

• Why do you want to write this document?
  
  
  
• What good things do you hope will happen as an immediate result?
  
  
  • How do you hope this document will support your long-term professional and personal goals?
    
    
  • How do you hope this document will support your organization's goals?
  
  
  
• What opportunities--for you personally or for your organization--do you see as you approach this writing situation?
  
  
  
• What threats or pitfalls can you see that you need to avoid or mitigate?
  
  
  
• What personal and organizational strengths and resources can you use to advantage here?
  
  
  
• What weaknesses or shortcomings do you need to be wary of?
  
  
  
• What, specifically, do you want reader(s) to learn as a result of reading your text?
  
  
  
• What exactly do you want reader(s) to believe?
  
  
  
• How do you want reader(s) to feel?
  
  
  
• What, specifically, do you want reader(s) to do--or to refrain from doing--as a result of reading your text?
  
  
  
• Given these goals, what is a reasonable level of effort for you (and your colleagues) to invest in this document?
  
  
  

• Who will read this document?
  
  
  
• Who is the primary reader--the person (or persons) to whom the document is addressed?
  • Your co-workers? People you supervise? Your boss? Your boss's boss? Someone else in the organization?

  • Someone outside the organization? A customer, client, or vendor (or potential customer, client, or vendor)?

  • A professional colleague? A competitor? A stakeholder in your company or in the issue you're writing about?
  
  
  
  
• Will your primary reader(s) pass the document on to someone else within or outside of the organization?
  
  
  
• To whom? And for what reason?
  
  
  
• Will your primary reader(s) put your document in a file or include it in another document that could be read by someone else later?
  
  
  
• How, exactly, do you envision this document being used long-term?
  
  
  
• What values, assumptions, ethical principles, and cultural frameworks will your readers bring to their reading of this document?
  
  
  
• What political, economic, and personal interests will your readers bring to their reading of this document?
  
  
  
• Will different readers have different uses for your document?
  • If so, what are those uses?

  • Who will do what with the document, and what information will they need to do this?

  • How can you organize the document to help all these different readers find what they need?
  
  
  
  
• What do your readers already know about the issues the document covers?
  
  
  
• Will the readers understand the context of your writing, or should you supply an explanation of context within the document itself?
  
  
  
• Will all your readers understand the specific details, technical terms, or abbreviations in your document? If not, which will need to be explained?
  
  
  
• Which explanations can be omitted given the readers' expertise, needs, and interests? (And don't forget different readers' differing expertise, needs, and interests!)
  
  
  
• What are the readers' attitudes toward you and toward your organization?
  
  
  

• What are the key propositions or conclusions you want your readers to accept?
  
  
  
• What foundational values, assumptions, ethical principles, and cultural frameworks inform the arguments that are crucial to you?
  
  
  
• What do readers need to know and believe to be persuaded to respond or take the action you want them to take?
  
  
  
• How much of this information do you have readily at hand? What information do you need that you don't have? And what will you need to do to get the additional information?
  
  
  
• Which propositions, conclusions, values, assumptions, principles, and information will your readers readily accept? Which do they already accept? Which will they be likely to resist? And which might they reject out of hand? Why?
  
  
  
• What is the level of emotion embedded in the issues here? Do you want to emphasize and heighten the emotional dimensions of your arguments? Or do you want to flatten and mute the emotional argument? Why?
  
  
  

• What conventions, customs, protocols, or habits of business practice are normally evoked in this kind of situation within your own organization, your readers' organization, and within your respective legal, ethical, and cultural frameworks?
  
  
  
• To what extent can you confidently rely on these conventions as a guide for your actions and your writing in this situation?
  
  
  
• How can you resolve conflicting conventions?
  
  
  
• At what points and to what extent might it be useful for you to bend, break, or abandon some conventions?
  
  
  
• What medium is the most appropriate given the situation at hand, your goals, and your readers?
  • A paper document? Of what sort?

  • E-mail?

  • A phone call or face-to-face conversation?

  • An oral presentation?
  
  
  
  
• If a print or electronic document is the most appropriate medium, what kind of document does this situation typically call for?
  
  
  
• What length and format should you use?
  
  
  
• What level of formality would be appropriate given the situation and your relationship with your readers?
  
  
  
• Does the complexity of the situation (e.g. complex information, complex inter-organizational relationships, complex project timelines) call for you to use multiple media and modes of communication?
  • Do written reports need to be introduced by oral presentations?

  • Do oral presentations need to be supplemented by written reports?

  • Do the words of both oral and written reports need to be explained by charts, tables, pictures, and other graphic elements?
  
  
  
  
• Does the organization where you work have guidelines that should determine the format and style of this document? Or do your readers follow guidelines for format and style they expect to see in documents they receive? If so, what specifics do you want to be sure to follow from these guidelines?
  
  
  
• What are the specific mechanical conventions for a standard business document for this situation?
  
  
  
• How rigorously should you follow the conventions of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word usage in this situation?
  
  
  

• Is credibility an important issue here? In other words, do your readers already assume that you and your organization are competent, trustworthy, and well informed, or will they be skeptical?
  
  
  
• How can you build their trust and overcome any skepticism?
  
  
  
• To what extent should your document make explicit your own--and your organization's--underlying values, assumptions, ethical principles, cultural frameworks, and organizational practices?
  
  
  
• To what extent should your document embody and express your own individual voice and personality and the voice and personality of the organization you represent?
  
  
  
• Given your readers, the situation, and your goals, what kind of image do you want your readers to have of you and your organization?
  
  
  
• What tone of voice should readers hear in the document? Reserved, formal, and distant?
  • Warm, cordial, informal?

  • Imposing?

  • Intractable?

  • Engaging?

  • Flexible?

  • Assertive?

  • Compliant?
  
  
  
  
• What kind of relationship should this tone suggest between you and your readers?
  
  
  

For questions and suggestions, please e-mail us at kilbornj@stcloudstate.edu or rinkster@stcloudstate.edu.