Partially because I got out of rhythm and work piled up, but also because I don’t feel particularly joyful when I write these days.

I love to write, but this project has become joyless for me.

It’s not because it’s hard, either. I enjoy running even though it’s hard and painful.

I like how hard writing is, so this feels different.

Writing nullified?

It was an interesting time to start a newsletter about writing when writing feels like it’s the last thing people care about.

Whenever I tell people I write a Substack about writing for work, their reaction is “Ugh, why?”

“Just get Co-Pilot, Claude, or ChatGPT to do it…”

For so many people writing is not a joyful experience – it’s tedious or anxiety-inducing.

It became that way for me, too.

So people just outsource it.

Writing pretensions

My project was meant to convince people to care about writing — specifically, to care about how they write.

My intentions were right, but I started from a place of preaching.

Take the name of the Substack: Writing without. It was a negative framing from the start.

And the tagline: without the clutter, the cliché, and the jargon.

Get rid of this, get rid of that. Delete, delete, delete.

Don’t get me wrong: there are absolutely issues with writing at work. I think we all agree that jargon is annoying. We roll our eyes at it, no doubt.

But I have talked with a lot of people about writing at work in the past two years and you know what the problem is? Not so much what they write, but just writing in general.

People don’t want to write and now they have the most convenient way not to.

The other part of the job is to get people to enjoy writing so that they want to write.

I want people to experience the joys of writing before I worry about how to write most effectively. Moreover, people won’t want to improve if it feels like a burden.

Writing still matters

So, what does that mean for this newsletter?

Well, I don’t quite know.

But I believe in writing so deeply on many levels.

Not only do I think writing help you have a better career (by sharpening your thinking, reasoning, and memory) but I believe it can help you live a better life (through reflection).

But the main focus of this newsletter will stay on writing at work because of its important role in our day to day lives. By being better workers, we can more strongly serve people around us.

How that looks, TBD.

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Often I hear people say that AI is improving their writing, helping them to ‘sound the way they want to.’

No matter how good GenAI gets, though, it will not give you your voice.

You can train it by uploading your emails, messages, whatever, but the more and more you use it the less and less of ‘you’ there will be to ‘inspire’ it. Your work will slowly morph into goopy generic writing.

As more people join the Collective, it will be more important for you to stand out in a crowd of sameness.

Having a point of view (POV) will be your key.

Your POV is the lens through which you view the world. It’s based on your experience, your taste, your interests, and your observations.

In this post there are four exercises to help you hone that POV.

How it works:

These exercises are intended to get you to in the practice of writing your unique perspective.

It’s difficult to discover that because it’s unconscious so these exercises are forcing you to something we don’t often do in corporate life: self-reflection.

📝I recommend writing by hand to not get distracted by the pings, emails, and 100 open tabs.

^_⏰ For each of these, spend about 15 — 25 minutes on them.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑You do not have to share them with anyone, but getting feedback may help you refine the ideas.

1. “What doing X taught me about Y”

What lessons did you learn from your hobbies, passions, and life experiences? How can you apply them to your current job?

I’ll be the first admit that this formula – often used for overly-written LinkedIn posts – is corny. (Even though I famously launched this Substack using it.)

It can result in strange, nonsensical connections (“What losing my family dog taught me about leading a B2B sales team”)*1.

BUT it’s a useful framework.

What I love about this is that you must start with your own unique experience.

There are two strong starts to deciding on the ‘X’: One is to start with a hobby that you’re passionate about. The other one is about an experience you had.

The stronger the emotional connection you have to the hobby or life event, the better. Do not force a connection, though.

📝Write three short paragraphs:

1. the experience, passion or hobby;

2. the lesson; and

3. the connection.

It doesn’t have to be in that order.

Think through the application: how would someone who doesn’t share your hobby or hasn’t had your experience put your lesson into practice?

2. And that, kids, is How I Got My Job

Along the same lines, this exercise is about your personal experiences.

📝 For this, write a short (three or four paragraphs) explanation of how you got to your current job.

One of the most helpful exercises I had to do during business school was learn to tell my story. Darden was keen on focusing on my why, my purpose.

Your purpose is deeper than your resume.

It should not just be about what college you went to, what you studied, what your job experience was. It’s about what drove you to those specific places or to make those particular choices.

Unless you’re a pre-programmed humanoid or you’re Anton Chigurh using a coin, you had to make decisions. Unpack those decisions.

What motivated you to do them?

Be comfortable even if the answer is as simple as ‘my father went to this school and it seemed like a good choice.’

Focus on the ‘pivot points’, the moments where status quo was disrupted and you changed your situation.

That’s what I love about a career story. I haven’t met anyone who hasn’t changed jobs/careers or been promoted.

The choices you made reflect your values and priorities, which are key to your point of view.

3. The mole hill you would die on

What’s the one little, insignificant thing you would go to your grave fighting if you spoke your mind?

No matter how much someone tries to convince you, you won’t change your mind.

The thing that you won’t say in a meeting but you will text your best friend / significant other about.

📝 For this exercise, battle it out on the page.

Whatever your stance is, back it up. Don’t pick something that is a gut-reaction that is empirically wrong. This works better if you have evidence and support.

Here is an example of something I recently texted my friend who is an English teacher:

Me: [Sends clip of Tina Fey saying ‘rowt’ instead of ‘root’]

Me: How do you say route 1?

K: I will die on this hill. What do you call the thing that sends out your wifi signal?

That’s the kind of energy you need to channel for this exercise. You feel passionate about an opinion and you back it up with logic.

4. Ruler for a week

Imagine you’re given free reign to do anything you want for a week at work. What 3 things would you change?

Don’t just say ‘fire XYZ.’ That’s a lame answer. Be specific.

For example, I firmly believe in good coffee and free snacks at the office. It signals to your employees that you are willing to invest in the in-office experience.

Whatever you decide, though, you need to justify your decisions.

That is the challenging part. You need to combine opinion with fact.

📝 So for this exercise you will need to build your case. Demonstrate the value of the change.

Returning to my example:

Investing in the in-office experience through healthy snack options or nicer coffee machines raises employee satisfaction by 33%.

All of these exercises require you to (1) focus on your experiences and passions and (2) combine them with evidence so that you can provide an insightful POV.

Stephan covers personal finance, business, and economics at NPR. You can hear him frequently on All Things Considered and The Indicator from Planet Money.

He also performs at Faraway Theater in Birmingham, AL., which is where we met.

In this episode we talk about his career in journalism and how he approaches writing for radio.

When he was studying journalism, he discovered the power of people’s voices.

It started when he listened to an episode on Radiolab called “Falling.” In it, there’s an interview between two people, Sarita and Simon, who broke up. The moment that struck Stephan was when Sarita shares that after her break up with Simon, she would walk by his restaurant. Because he had ‘face blindness’, he never recognized her. And you can hear him learn about her habit live (19:10 — 20:37) — his voice cracking, his quiet reflection.

Throughout his career, he has centered the protagonist’s voice in his reporting.

Putting people back into the data

One quality of someone’s voice is that it’s humanizing. In this episode, Stephan talks about this concept of re-humanizing data. Polls, stats, and surveys come from human beings. They’re about people.

We can get used to reporting numbers — 50k users, 900 responders, 1mm site visitors — and forget that they are real people with, as Morrissey said, “loves and hates and passions just like mine.”

Our job is to put life back into the figures so that our work is about the people we’re seeking to serve. One way to do this is to include the stories behind the numbers.

Side bar - you haven’t listened to Planet Money?

In this episode, Stephan talks about NPR’s the Indicator and Planet Money.

If you haven’t listened to this show, it’s the best business podcast that does not feel like a business podcast.

I highly recommend listening to ‘Why Is The Milk In The Back Of The Store?’ and ‘The Fondue Conspiracy.’

What’s your favorite narrative podcast?

“I just like to put it all on the page,” he said.

“Sometimes we can spend too much time on making pretty slides and not enough on the actual idea.”

Then he looked at me. “No offense,” he added.

By the looks of his slide – boxes of text all over, tables of various metrics – his goal was to display information. Even if it looks messy.

I like a wordy slide, too, but aesthetics matter.

You should care about how your slides look because that influences how your ideas come across.

Why design matters

Strong ideas alone will not help your strategy.

As my friend / slide guru Krystle-Mei said, slides should be “punchy, aesthetic, and memorable.”

It is easier to remember a picture than a word. Therefore, visuals reinforce your ideas.

When referencing some research or report, I have often heard from coworkers or even said myself, “do you remember that slide that looked like this?”

Put careful thought into how you visualize and bring your idea to life.

3 basic design principles

You don’t need to be a graphic designer, web developer, or even a creative personal at all to make prettier slides.

There are three basic design principles you can easily learn: hierarchy, white space, and contrast.

1. Hierarchy:

Where do you want your reader to start and end?

Visual hierarchies on a slide highlight the main take away (the headline), the supporting evidence, and if applicable next steps.

2. White Space:

Wall-to-wall text is overwhelming.

When you have supporting evidence, pay attention to how you display them.

Having negative space between these ideas makes clear that they are separate.

3. Contrast:

Contrast can emphasize an idea.

For example, think about what the writer is trying convey when s/he writes a stat like this:

63% of Americans prefer cow cheese over almond milk.

Or like this:

63% of Americans prefer cow milk over almond milk.

Or even like this:

63% of Americans prefer cow milk over almond milk.

Each emphasis can convey a different meaning.

And how it’s received depends on the audience. Do they work on a farm, at the almond milk brand Silk, or in Europe?

Contrasting colors likewise show relationships and emphases.

Notice how this graphic uses theree different shades of blue to convey how these boxes relate to each other.

Other principles to learn

You can find other principles online. Here are just two useful videos with more ways to think about design.

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I’ve always enjoyed Seth’s work. When I started in marketing I of course picked up Purple Cow. This book was another enriching, fun read.

It’s written in 297 bite-sized chapters that span many areas that aren’t a part of most strategy conversations, such as cultures and systems (more on that below).

One minor issue I have with the book is that the definition of strategy is a little abstract.

He defines it as the change we seek to make. In his words, it’s a philosophy of becoming. “A compass, not a map.” It’s a little fluffly, in my opinion. Books like Playing to Win are much more concrete and practical than this book.

However, I believe this book can inspire the right kinds of strategy conversations within teams.

Here are my four main take aways from his book:

I. ‘No’ is a necessary parameter:

‘No’ defines your boundaries of what you’re willing to focus on and invest in. If you are uncomfortable saying no to projects or ideas, you’ll do everything worse.

II. Networks are key to adoption:

People carry ideas and products forward. Understanding why people resist ideas or adopt them is important for understanding the potential success or failure of your strategy.

III. Systems support or thwart:

This is the current and you need to understand whether you’re going against it or with it.

However brilliant your strategy is, it can be killed in a resistant system. For example, some companies prefer to augment their product’s features through 3rd party systems. Getting them to suddenly build the features in-house would be challenging.

But you can make the choice to invent a new system that would allow your strategy to thrive. It’s a choice.

IV. Culture defines what’s acceptable or not:

If your strategy contends with the prevailing norms of a culture (inside and outside of the company), it’s unlikely to succeed.

Whether you are pitching an idea to stakeholders in another department or designing a campaign for your ideal customer, try to understand the ideas that underlie those people’s sense of identify (“People like us do things like this and not that”).

Hope you enjoy this book, too!

Audiobooks 100% count as reading.

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So, a lot of people use the 5 by 5 rule: A slide should have no more than 5 bullets and no more than 5 words for bullets.

That means a max of 25 words on each slide. More than that and you’re being too ‘wordy.’

I agree that aesthetics matter. Words matter, too.

The issue with fewer words

While a screen full of text can be overwhelming, a slide with just a headline feels incomplete.

By focusing on the ‘key take away’, it lacks key information.

I have seen presentations from vendors where there is a slide with a graph that indicates something and a headline. That’s it.

But the speaker talked at length about the many factors that influenced the trends behind the graph. Anyone who missed the presentation lost out on those insights.

Presentations are not just for the audience in the meeting to look at while you talk. They are documents that have a shelf life beyond the meeting.

Why we prefer fewer words

Decks are a visual medium so you should care about aesthetics. You need to understand how people read (or scan) the page. The way you design a slide can help people digest information.

Visuals can’t tell the complete story, though. However, people resist using more than 50 words.

One reason is it can be over stimulating. I have watched people’s eyes pop out whenever they see a slide with a lot of text.

Another reason is that people worry about reading from slides.

They think, “People can read. Why do I need to read for them?”

Indeed, no one does like being read to. It is hard to read a slide and listen to someone, too.

Do not read every word. You should guide the listener by hitting the main points instead.

The case for more words

I’m not advocating for a lot of words just for the sake of it.

What I urge is that you consider this: does your slide communicate an idea in a full and complete way?

Think of a standard paragraph: it has one topic, supporting evidence, and a conclusion. A slide should have the same elements.

There should be no blanket 5x5 rule.

In the same way, every person has his or her own experience of being full after a meal. If I were to eat the same portion of dinner my wife had, I would not feel as full as she did.

If you can cover everything in 25 words, great. If you need more, that’s fine, too.

After you’ve decided what you want to say, think about how you want to represent it visually.

For example, here is a slide from JPMorgan Chase’s investor day that has one clear point with sections that reinforce that point. In 178 words!

You probably don’t need 178 words. Focus on answering the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ behind the headline.

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Yet how often do practice writing at work? I would guess not often.

So how do you get excellent at ‘written communications’?

You write at work, yes. You may ask your co-worker or manager for feedback on a deck or a brief you made. But that’s not the same as practicing.

That’s performance-based writing — meaning, its end goal is to be shared with an actual audience for a particular outcome or decision.

In general, those assignments are higher stakes situations that are not conducive to sharpening your skills.

If we don’t build in time to practice in low-risk situations, we won’t be ready for when those situations arise and it counts.

Jalen Brunson cannot skip practice, show up just to a game, and expect to play well.

In a similar way, if you haven’t been conditioning or practicing, you will:

⚠️ Not have enough stamina: Burn out quickly. Thoughts are sluggish.

⚠️ Get injured: Won’t be able to handle the stress of the performance.

⚠️ Stunted performance: Have flimsy ideas. Can be vague, cliché, or jargony.

Practicing at work:

You won’t need a lot of time. You can fit in 10-15 minute exercises into your day.

However, before you start you should keep these things in mind.

Practices should have some of these elements to be productive:

✅ Intentionality: You need to be clear about what you want from practice – and if you’re working with a partner, what you expect from him or her.

✅ Evaluation and Feedback: When you look at what you wrote, does this match your intentions? Assess how you are tracking against the goals you’ve set.

✅ Reflection: To internalize what you’ve learned, ask yourself: What was different about what I expected to happen vs what did happen? What led me to assume it would go differently? What do I know now that I didn’t know then?

You do need to be mindful of those even for low-stakes practices.

All right, here are 4 things you can do to be game-day ready for your writing.

“Watching Game Film”

Find examples of writing you like. What resonates with you? What skills do you notice the writer using?

Do you have these same skills? If not, how can you adopt their techniques in your writing?

Jot down 5 things you like and 5 things you would change about the example.

This is what it means to read like a writer.

“Run drills”

Find writing prompts online (like this) and block off 15-20 minutes a day to respond to them. Or you can set aside time to just write whatever is on your mind (called free writing).

Give yourself at least 5 minutes of that time to revise what you wrote.

You won’t fix everything that needs to be fixed, but you’ll at least start to build the muscle of rewriting your work.

“Coaching”

Getting feedback is going to be crucial for your development. Writing is communication after all. Your writing must be understood by another person.

Find a trusted co-worker who also wants to improve his or her writing skills, too. Write together and/or read each other’s work.

Find the confusing parts, the clunky parts, the boring parts in each other’s work. Then, refine, refine, refine.

“Hit the shower”

Don’t be stinky. Take a shower.

Want more practice?

Try these fun, short exercises.

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Part of the issue is time, of course. Meetings conquered our calendars.

The other issue is that our main types of writing — briefs, presentations, reports, emails, messages — feel either too formal or too informal for us to practice.

To help, here are 3 exercises you can do to practice your writing skills during a busy day.

Please note: These are not meant to shared with anyone. You can. But that’s not the point.

1. ‘Dear Work Diary’

This is an easy one to do. We’re all familiar with journaling.

You may feel silly doing it, but there are two main benefits to this exercise:

1. Journaling improves your memory.

2. Writing about your own experience can be easier than writing about the analytical or abstract work we do each day.

Instructions: Take 10 or 15 minutes at the end of the work day to just write out what happened that day that was notable. It can be about anything — an awkward joke someone made at the beginning of a virtual call or some project you’re working on. It doesn’t have to be about the specifics of the work itself. You can write about how you feel about the work or your coworkers.

Here are some questions to spark your thinking:

What surprised you? What delighted you? What frustrated you?

2. Presentation Letterboxd

Another short exercise is to review a presentation like a movie on Letterboxd1.

If you’re not familiar with Letterboxd, it’s a site where you write a little review of movies you’ve watched.

Instructions: Write a review of a presentation you listened to that day. Give it a star rating and then write a review. Keep it brief. One or two paragraphs max. Give your experience of the content and the form. Was it convincing? Was it too long? Did the presenter do a good job?

You may feel uncomfortable reviewing your coworkers this way. Relax. It’s just for you. These aren’t a part of the official meeting minutes that will be circulated to the group afterwards.

This can help you sharpen your own taste. You can highlight things you like or don’t like about the presentation and then you can incorporate that into your style.

3. Letter to the Editor

You may not read physical newspapers, but you may be familiar with letters to the editor.

They are readers’ responses to a publication about an article. Readers share their own experience of the topic or they disagree with the writer’s stance in the article.

For the purposes of this exercise, we will do the latter. It’s more fun to disagree, anyway.

We all have those moments when you hear a CEO or head of a department espouse some strategy the company is pursuing that you find baffling.

“Huh? That’s our focus?”

The exercise is to write a response to any topic that you hear a senior leader discuss.

Instructions: Write one or two paragraphs stating what you understood his or her argument to be. Then, write your opposing argument in a form of a letter. Note: don’t hit send!

This can be a fun way to unleash those private “oh, hell no” thoughts out. Just don’t be inflammatory.

These exercises are meant to be done in short bursts. You do not have to worry about revising them. They are meant to get you writing.

Want more practice?

Take 10 or 15 minutes to do some free writing. Unlike the exercises above, freewriting can have less guidelines. You can write whatever you like, however you like.

What star rating would you give to the last presentation you heard?

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While I could make a list of the best business books I read, I won’t.

You’ll never know why I think you should read Maryann Piotrowski’s great little practical book Effective Business Writing. Nor what I thought of Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle. You won’t know if The Innovator’s Dilemma is over hyped or not.

Instead, please enjoy these non-business books.

Naked by David Sedaris

You can’t go wrong with any of his books, really. I read Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim in January, but this one claims the top spot because of ‘Ashes.’

‘Ashes’ is the best example of his humor – dark, funny, touching. Everyone looks like an asshole in his stories — especially him.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

One of the best opening lines ever:

“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”

It over delivers on its tragic promise.

Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing by Robert Caro

I won’t lie to you: I had never read Robert Caro’s books before.

I know he’s a great, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His books on Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert Moses are highly influential.

I found this because I was looking for one of his audiobooks and was shocked by the length (66 hours!), so picked this much shorter book instead.

I enjoyed learning about his craft. He was deeply committed to research. “Turn every page” is his credo.

However, he never dumped all the facts he collected onto the page to prove something. His stories were rooted in the lives of the people affected by those powerful political figures. In this book, he shares how he got to know those stories.

It’s also a fun listen because Caro himself narrates the audiobook and he has a great New York accent.

The 66 hour-long book (The Power Broker) is on my 2026 reading list. Hold me accountable!

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This book made a lot of noise when it came out. I got sucked into all of the combative interviews, I’ll admit. But when I read the book, I was amazed by its warmth and empathy.

Ultimately, this book is about how he became a writer and how he realized the power of stories.

Ta-Nehisi is one of the most gifted non-fiction writers of this generation. Whether you agree with him or not on certain issues, he is an undeniable talent and approaches every subject with deep humanity.

I don’t always agree with him, but I am glad to engage with him nonetheless.

What were your top 5 reads of 2025?

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Kim is a professor at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.

She was my professor at Darden and in my second year I was her research assistant.

One thing I’ve always appreciated about her was her practical advice. One of her strengths was bridging the gap between theory and practice.

She came into academia with a wealth of experience. She spent most of her career at Procter & Gamble, served as the general manager of the Breakfast Division for Aurora Foods, and was the CMO of David’s Bridal, the country’s leading bridal apparel retailer.

In addition to being a prolific academic researcher, she publishes regularly in Forbes. I’ve included some recommended articles at the end of this post.

In this episode, I talk to her about writing for different audiences, P&G’s writing culture, and dissecting writing.

Here are my top three take aways from my interview with her:

Reverse-engineering writing:

When Kim started writing for academic journals and then mainstream publications like Forbes, she learned how to write in those distinct styles by mirroring the structure and tone of those articles.

She approached her writing by reverse-engineering what worked in those various publications. This is similar to this idea of ‘reading like a writer’, one of the core concepts that my wife Caroline talked about on her episode.

Once you discover the patterns or structures of writing you admire, you can add those techniques to your own writing.

Adapting to the audience’s preferred style:

It’s basic marketing, as Kim puts it. How you talk to one audience is not how you would talk to another audience. Yet we tend to have one approach – our style, what we know, what we like – and want people get on board with that.

Instead, to be able to reach and engage with a particular audience, you need to adapt to their preferred style.

Representing your thinking and your logic:

One of the parts I enjoyed hearing about was how P&G revered writing. As Kim shared about her time there, P&G were aware that stylized PowerPoint decks could influence decision making. They stripped out the noise of formatting or visuals from their One Page Reco so that the ideas would be the star of the show.

The logic needs to be there, plain enough to grasp in that small format.

Style cannot cover for faulty logic or no logic.

Hope you enjoy the episode.

Check out these articles to learn more about Kim’s research:

• The CMO Role is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.

• Working At These Companies May Be Your Stepping Stone To CEO

• New Research Indicates CEO Perception Of CMO Performance Is Improving

Are there writers or journalists that you frequently draw inspiration from?

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Brian Barrett is the Executive Editor at WIRED. He’s worked in journalism since 2006. We also do a monthly improv show at Faraway Theater in Birmingham, Alabama, called Pigeons.

In this episode, we talk about his career in journalism and his thoughts on reporting and managing journalists as the Executive Editor of WIRED.

If you write in your job, you can benefit from learning how journalists approach their work. Journalists write for a broad audience and have to relay facts in a logical and plain way.

One of the key stills you can practice as a writer is reading like one. Take an article you enjoyed and ask yourself:

• What are the choices this journalist makes?

• How does s/he convey information, even technical information?

• How does s/he bring in sources?

Then you begin to notice what you like and can incorporate those techniques into your style.

Find good examples of journalists and emulate their style. If you don’t have a favorite journalist, try reading these two writers that I enjoy:

• Jason Gay, sports columnist at the Wall Street Journal. Here’s a great example of his work.

• David Brooks, opinion columnist at the New York Times. Start by reading this.

And check out Brian’s work!

What is the last best article you read?

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Marshall is a freelance film journalist whose writings, interviews, and reviews appear in Slant Magazine, Decider, the Playlist, and other outlets.

He also has a newsletter that he’s been writing over 16 years called Marshall and the Movies. I highly recommend you subscribe to it and check out his monthly streaming recommendations (‘The Upstream’ and ‘The Downstream’).

In addition to that, he’s been working in marketing for over 10 years, including working at the ad agency Ogilvy in New York.

We met in New York through my wife, Caroline, because they both went to Wake Forest together. He’s a delightful, affable human, so I was excited to interview him for this newsletter.

In this episode, we talk about journalism, covering films, marketing, and how his two careers intersect (a subject he has covered in his newsletter, too!).

Enjoy.

What is a passion of yours that you like to write about?

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In this episode, she shares tips on how to tell a story that connects with your audience and your customers.

Key highlights include:

• The Platinum Rule: Give the audience what they want. To do that, you need to be a good listener, know what type of information resonates with them, and understand what their level of knowledge about the subject is. Do they like high-level information? Do they like all of the details? Are they industry experts?

• Making Slides Digestible: Random facts without context or sources are distracting for your audience and can work against your messaging. Helping your audience visualize your ideas by mocking it up can reduce their cognitive load.

Who is the best story teller you know at work? What do they do effectively?

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“As people consume more fiction, drama, history, and journalism they start to inhabit other people's minds – they imagine what life is like among people unlike themselves – and conceivably that could expand their circle of empathy.” – Professor Steven Pinker

I’m a humanities major in my soul, as if that wasn’t obvious. I have a Good Reads account, and I married an English teacher. I came into and graduated from business school solidly a Poet.

I’m not completely biased here when I say this, though:

Reading novels can help you create strategies that truly help customers’ needs.

I know this is a hard case to make, especially as everyone seems to be reading in their free time less and less, but stick with me.

A mistake we can make is to assume that our customers think and feel about our product exactly as we Insiders do. However, we can use a lot of research techniques to better know how they feel, from ethnographic interviews to simple user surveys.

To get at the heart of their needs, though, you need a deep sense of empathy for them.

The best strategists in Product, Design, Marketing, etc. approach consumers’ unmet needs with great empathy for what the customer is experiencing.

And a great way to build that muscle, according to research, is by reading novels. A meta-analysis of 70 studies showed that reading fiction helped increase our understanding of others.

Drawing you in:

Fiction draws you into a character’s perspective. You understand another person’s point of view, their experience, and their psychology.

Moreover, novels do not merely relay what happened. They give you a sense for what the characters feel about what happened.

In much the same way, customer journey maps should capture not just what the customer does, but also what s/he experiences. Emotions are a core part of their experience; they can highlight pain points that may cause a customer to leave or what excites them the most.

“Reckoning with otherness”:

“Reading old books is an education in reckoning with otherness; its hope is to make the other not identical with me but rather, in a sense, my neighbor.” – Alan Jacobs, author of Breaking Bread with the Dead

To practice, pick up an old book (over 100 years old). Older books, often because of differences in the language and culture, force us to slow down. You must think through the culture that the book was written in, think about what was universally believed then, and understand what’s different now.

You don’t need to treat this like an English assignment (don’t tell my wife). Even a lightweight Wikipedia intro to a book can help you.

Reading at whim:

That said, you don’t need to pick up The Odyssey to get started. It’s more important that you read what you like because reading is a key skill for any writer.

As Stephen King said, “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.”

So read, as Alan Jacobs suggests, whatever gives you delight.

Testing it out:

A heightened awareness of your customers’ experience should inform how you build your strategy.

As you conduct field studies and in-depth interviews with consumers, you will observe a wide range of thoughts and feelings.

Empathy maps, which are used in the user experience/design world, help you capture those thoughts and feelings and then understand which themes shine through.

As you speak with customers, take notes on:

• What do they say: what words or adjectives do they use when they express themselves? What’s their tone of voice?

• What do they think about: when they think about the issue you’re trying to solve, what matters the most to them?

• What do they do with it: are they using your product the way you thought they would?

• Their feelings: what emotional state are they in when they use your product? Frustrated, excited, ambivalent? Does their body language and tone match that?

Then your job is to pick one theme that you can address.

While you do not have to ball up the other ideas, do not attempt to tackle them all at once. Strategy, in the end, is about which problems you choose to solve.

I’m about to finish The Secret History by Donna Tartt. What do you recommend I read next?

Leave a comment

Dr. Brodsky is a management professor at McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. He is an expert on how technology affects how we work and communicate. He also has years of experience consulting and training organizations across the world such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon, Dell Technologies, Novo Nordisk, and GuideWell Connect.

In his book, he shares advice that helps you navigate workplace communication – whether you’re fully remote or in person.

We are all virtual communicators. We call each other over the phone or via Zoom, text, email, and IM. In fact, the average worker spends about five hours a day on email and ninety minutes IM’ing– on top of virtual calls.

We therefore need to know how best to use these tools.

I highly recommend this book. In fact, I have already encouraged many of my coworkers to read it and we’re doing a book club on it (I know, I know).

Here are my top 3 take aways from Ping:

I. Be explicit about expectations

So much of Dr. Brodsky’s book is about understanding each other’s perspectives (it’s the ‘P’ in the PING framework). However, we all struggle to understand where people are coming from and what’s on their mind.

This is evident, for example, when it comes to how quickly we think someone needs us to reply to their email. This is called email urgency bias.

We assume that when someone emails us, they expect a response sooner than they actually do. This keeps us tethered to our phones, constantly checking emails. We interrupt our tasks to respond to every new email right away.

However, in a lot of cases, the sender is fine with a response within a reasonable time frame.

One thing we can do to reduce this stress is to be explicit about our expectations.

As the sender, you can help by writing something like “If you could let me know by X date, I’d appreciate it” so that the recipient doesn’t feel like he/she has to reply back immediately.

Or you can talk to your manager and teammates about norms like:

• If you expect a quick answer, send me an IM instead of an email

• Or if I don’t respond to your email in 48 hours, feel free to follow up via chat or in email

Dr. Brodsky’s site has resources to help your team have open conversations about this.

While we’re on the subject of emails: we may worry about over communicating via email but quick replies like “Thanks for letting me know” are less harmful than no replies.

Dr Brodsky highlighted research that showed how under-communicating made leaders seem less qualified because they’re seen as less empathic.

A quick messages can show that you’re attentive and acknowledging the other person’s message.

II. Cameras off or on?

There has been plenty of articles and research about Zoom fatigue.

We know that one of the causes of that is that when we have a video of ourselves, we tend to look at what we’re doing. Our posture, our facial expressions, our backgrounds. It’s exhausting constantly reevaluating how one looks every few seconds.

One way to fix that is to turn our ‘self view’ off, so you’re not sucked into watching yourself.

While there is a place for cameras being on – it is helpful earlier on in a working relationship – there is less benefit for established relationships. When you’re already familiar with your coworkers, you don’t get any incremental value by switching your cameras on during meetings.

In the book, Dr. Brodsky shares one study that looked at audio-only vs video and found that there wasn’t much difference when there was already a history of working together.

If you are starting to get to know people, shorter one-on-one videocalls are going to be more effective for building a relationship and trust.

Interestingly, when it comes to virtual video calls, fake backgrounds (like a stylish hotel) worsened the first impressions as they seem less professional. Plants and book cases are good.

III. A better way to brainstorm

Dr. Brodsky shares research on how brainstorming in meetings is ultimately less effective, especially with three or more participants.

They tend to produce fewer ideas in general and fewer high-quality ideas.

There are a few reasons why:

1. People get anchored to one idea and any subsequent comment is influenced by it, so these groups tend to get less surprising/innovative ideas.

2. People can get self-conscious about throwing out ‘bad’ ideas in group settings, especially if they’re junior.

3. Obviously, only one person can talk at a time so getting everyone to contribute a few ideas in a 30–45-minute meeting is challenging.

A more effective way is to brainstorm is to:

1. Have people submit ideas independently (and anonymously).

2. Collect everyone’s responses, scramble them up, and send them back to the group to rank.

3. Select the top 5 ideas for the group to then discuss together.

The smaller the group, the better. Also, the more concentrated the list, the better.

Share

Again, I recommend you check out Ping.

Enjoy the episode.

What is your email/IM/video call pet peeve?

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I’m excited to share my first interview with you.

I will publish new interviews periodically. These episodes will feature experts and practicioners from various backgrounds. They all bring years of experience with writing and have insights that can help you sharpen your writing skills at work.

Who better to be my first guest than my wife, Caroline?

Caroline is an adjunct professor at Samford University in their core writing classes. She has also taught middle school and high school students.

We met at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater (famously) and she has helped me become a better writer — both in comedy and at work.

Episode highlights

In this episode, Caroline talks about:

• Efficiency culture: The reason we struggle with writing is that our culture is — and has been — obsessed with trying to maximize efficiencies in every area of our lives. Writing is, however, slow and often messy work.

• Time-bound writing: Set a defined time limit for when you need to start writing. You can use free writing to not get stuck when you’re doing rough drafts.

• Reading like a writer: To start honing your voice, look for inspirations in what you like to read (newspapers, magazine articles or non/fiction books) and study what attracts you to the way he or she writes.

It was a fun conversation so I hope you enjoy!

If you like this new format or if there is a topic you’d like to hear more about, let me know!

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It seems that it is a requirement to get the job, but strengthening that skill goes is not a priority.

No one magically becomes good at making slides or writing reports, though, so if you want to have better writers, you need to onboard them and train them.

But to do this effectively, there are three things that your company needs to bolster your team’s writing skills: a template library, a style guide, and annotated model texts.

I. Template library:

A template library should house the most common types of documents that your team writes (product roadmaps, project status sheets, memos, briefs, etc.).

Templates are useful because they:

• Save time / mental energy because you are not starting from scratch;

• Make your communications look consistent by using standard formatting;

• Draw out more information through mandatory sections;

• And improve your team’s collaboration by having a common framework.

If you don’t have templates that your team widely uses, you can draw inspiration from online sources (HubSpot or Atlassian are ones that I’ve used) and customize them to your needs.

Be mindful, though, that templates are ineffective if people use them inconsistently. There should be a shared understanding of how to approach each type of document in the library.

II. Style guide:

You may be familiar with styles guides such as APA or MLA from high school and/or college. Or your company may have brand guidelines.

A style guide for your writing is a similar concept.

Like templates, style guides focus your energy as you write.

They give you font sizes and layouts, sure, but they can also provide you best practices.

For instance, style guides can teach the right way to cite sources across documents, slides, or other formats. Or they can even lay out how you write out amounts (is it m or k for thousands, for instance).

Style guides also share… well, stylistic choices.

For instance, at a former job, we were trained not to write generic headlines on slides like “Next Steps” or “Results.” Headlines were supposed to summarize the content of the slide in one sentence.

Your style guide, then, will instill your company’s taste.

This should not be super nitpicky. You need to leave room for creativity otherwise people feel stifled.

III. Annotated model texts:

Lastly, you need to provide model texts that demonstrate what your team should aspire to.

Model texts are inspirational. They can serve as a blueprint for someone as they figure out how to write in a particular format.

You need to set the bar high with these examples. It is key to have leadership agree on what excellence looks like so there is consensus not only around the task itself, but also around the skill involved to accomplish it.

You’ll need at least one example for each type of document in your top 5 templates that says, “This is how we want it done.”

You cannot rely on the model texts alone, however. You need to provide commentary through annotations.

Draw your reader’s attention to specific choices and note how they made writing stronger. For instance, if you have an example of a project charter you could highlight how an author used concrete numbers to demonstrate the KPIs by which the project will be judged.

Research has shown that a combination of model texts with descriptions and/or explanations help learners better than just model texts or guidelines alone.

Putting it all together in training:

While having these things are necessary, they alone are not sufficient to build a writing culture.

You need to incorporate these items into your training and onboarding programs. That will continually reinforce your expectations.

To understand how to best teach these skills, you can borrow the approaches that writing teachers use in your training.

According to research on how people learn to write, there are three phrases to a learner’s trajectory:

Emulating: In this phase, people learn a form by examining its structure/features, copying its style, and emulating a model text. You can use the three ingredients I mentioned above to accomplish this.

Giving Input and Feedback: This phase requires collaboration with your team on a document. You will give more input into the direction of the text, demonstrating how it mirrors the target text. Be tactful and understand what’s the right level of input needed, which will depend on your team’s skills.

Doing It Themselves: After getting comfortable, your team will start to venture out on their own. You’ll still give feedback, but they’ll be a little more autonomous in their writing.

As you begin building a culture that fosters good writing at your company, it’s going to take some trial and error to figure out how to institutionalize it. But it’s worth institutionalizing it through back-up from senior leaders.

Overtime, this will save you on the little back-and-forth on fixing small issues and you can focus more on the content.

Do you have a favorite source for templates?

Leave a comment

TO: Corporate America

FROM: Us

DATE: Friday, May 30, 2025

RE: Announcement on changes to workplace vocabulary

In our ongoing efforts to eliminate redundancies, clutter, and other distractions to our clarity, we are taking the difficult steps to rebalance our lexicon.

These changes will help us be in a better position to double click, touch base, and gain alignment.

As such, the following words are being eliminated:

• Boots on the ground will be retiring at the end of the quarter. We appreciate its contributions to sales calls throughout its career. Its position as Director of Military Metaphors will not be back-filled.

• Relatedly, in an effort to meet our vision of not appropriating terms, Huddle will leave the firm. There will be no more “huddles.” If you want to meet, just meet.

• Paradigm Shift has also been impacted by our decision to deflate phrases that describe how customer behaviors/industries change in undramatic ways.

These reductions do not reflect their individual performances, and we thank each of these words and phrases for their frivolity.

We are looking forward to how these changes will reflect our values of using less fluffy jargon.

Furthermore, we are making strategic realignments to our communication model to drive long-term understandability.

Blue-sky thinking, who stepped in to fill in Outside the Box’s position on an interim basis, will now be leading the Ideation division and all of our collaborative solutions initiatives.

After 5 years of service, Got A Sec will be promoted to Quick Chat, officially recognizing that its scope included a lot more than one second. It will continue to report through the Random Meeting Department.

Please share this information with your teams as appropriate.

Thank you.

Yes, jargon is annoying. And making fun of it is… low hanging fruit.

Yet it feels ubiquitous – and even irresistible.

What is jargon? Jaron is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group of people, and are difficult for others to understand.”

Some popular jargon you’re likely all too familiar with:

• Win-win

• Ducks in a row

• Blue sky thinking

• Action item

Jargon is different than technical/specialized terms (like API), though, because it could be substituted for a more accessible term (task instead of action item).

The allure

If jargon is so cringey, why is it so common?

First of all, it feels professional. In the same way that we generally dress a certain way for work, we assume that we also have to put on a new vocabulary at work. We slip on our blazer and suddenly, we feel more comfortable circling back and double-clicking into our day-to-day R&Rs.

Second, jargon makes us feel like we belong to a group (be it a department, a company, or even an occupation). People use jargon, whether consciously or unconsciously, to signal their membership in a professional community. Think of “googly” at Google. IYKYK.

I have worked in my marketing for most of my career. When I went to business school, I took accounting, finance, and data analysis classes. Each subject had its vocabulary and at first, I was confused by what my classmates meant by the ‘delta’ or ‘net net.’ It was like learning a new language. When it suddenly clicked, I felt like I could join in the discussions.

Third, using jargon is a status symbol.

People can use jargon to show -- not necessarily in a boastful way -- their expertise in a given field. Speaking too casually in a professional setting can come across as being inexperienced. You’re going to feel less confident in an interior designer who says she’s going to make your house look fancy than you would in a designer who says she’s going to give your house an elevated style.

The illusion

While jargon can be useful, it can often backfire if we lean too much into it.

Besides obscuring our message, there are three social consequences of being too jargony.

Insecurity:

Brown, Anicich, and Galinsky’s research shows that using too much jargon is a sign of insecurity. They looked at how workers who lacked status tend to overcompensate by trying to show (through jargon) that they have more status than they do.

This tends to be younger workers, interns, or new hires who are eager to prove themselves to their peers. So they may adopt a vocabulary that they think makes them look seasoned because we often associate this lexicon with high-status individuals.

However, jargon does not help you look more senior. A survey by Moneypenny showed that people who have over 10 years of experience tend to find jargon unnecessary and annoying.

So the new analyst who wants to be taken seriously by upper management may unintentionally show his immaturity.

Exclusiveness:

Moreover, as I mentioned before, adopting jargon can make you feel like you’re a part of a group.

But people can also wield their words to make others feel excluded. Oh, you don’t know how to speak at the 30,000-foot level?

Cooper and Brown call this the desire for status in the workplace "human peacocking.”

It can be a power play, which may make people distrust you in the end.

Unreliability:

Sociolinguistic literature has also shown that over reliance on jargon can make you seem less reliable.

If you use jargon to demonstrate your position within a group or boast about your expertise (intentionally or not), you’re prioritizing your reputation over clarity. In other words, you’re wanting your colleague think you’re smart/in-the-know more than wanting her to understand your message.

So if your coworkers think you’re being evasive and vague, that can damage their impression of you.

Is there a right way to use jargon?

Jargon is fine in small dosages. Truthfully, a lot depends on your context. Some companies and teams have a stronger stomach for jargon than others.

So you need to be able to code-switch and adapt to your surroundings. If there are words that are more broadly acceptable, use those instead of your flashy corporate phrases.

Try this exercise:

Are you being too jargony?

1. Take inventory of words you often repeat in meetings and during presentations.

2. Share a script/slides with a co-worker you trust and ask him/her to highlight buzzwords.

3. Replace them with alternative words/phrases.

What is your least favorite corporate buzzword?

Leave a comment

The amazing thing about abstract art is that each person can walk away from it with a different reaction.

That is the opposite response we want for our strategy. A key element of great strategies is that they are concrete. This will make your idea clear.

Take Airbnb’s strategy, for example: create a site where people who want to make money from their extra bedroom can connect with travelers who want an affordable, relaxed place to stay.

Weak strategies, like improving customer experience, are abstract. They aren’t definite. What part of the experience needs improvement? What does improvement specifically mean?

These high-level statements are common in the business world.

Take, for example, this slide from Expedia’s presentation at Deutsche Bank’s 2024 Technology Conference:

We can understand the message (how their scale reinforces each side), but not the details around the benefits of that scale (presumably better supplier negotiations or more variety for customers).

In other words, this slide focuses on the general (the abstract idea of scale) but not the particular (the concrete mechanics or benefits of such scale).

Abstract vs concrete words

You may remember learning about concrete and abstract nouns in school.

Concrete nouns are things you can touch, taste, see, and smell. Like “apple pie.”

Abstract words do not have any physical properties and are more conceptual. Like patriotism.

We see fuzzy, abstract words all of the time at work, such as:

• Culture

• Customer Loyalty

• Disruption

• Innovation

What do you see when you visualize “innovation”? Chances are that you and I would think of different things.

Concrete words like “chair” conjure up specific images in our mind when we hear them; you may think of a desk chair or a dining room chair, but it’s still a chair.

It is harder for us to imagine specifics when we hear abstract words. While we may know the exact definition of innovation, what it looks like to each of us is different.

Abstract words can thwart your strategy in two ways:

• Unfocused energy: it’s harder for people to focus their energy because they don’t fully understand what you mean. If you ask someone to “leverage data” in his or her job then there are a lot of ways to do that.

• Forgettable messages: studies have shown that people remember concrete words better than abstract words because of our mind’s ability to link words with specific images. If your slides are oversaturated with fuzzy language, your audience will therefore have a harder time remembering what you’re sharing.

In other words, people don’t know what you’re saying and they don’t remember what you said.

Consequently, your odds of successfully achieving your strategy have become much longer.

Here is the question you must ask: can someone picture what you’re saying? If not, provide specific facts, statistics, or examples to help your reader.

Let’s look at a slide I made that’s based on a public company’s presentation:

The writer outlines outline three components of their company’s strategic priorities, which are broad. On the right, the writer gives these general themes substance by providing examples.

Clicking is an everyday activity; it’s relatable. Awards are commonplace as well. Even though migrating data is not, we can see what is happening (movement from one area to another).

How do we spot abstract words in our writing and make them tangible and specific? Let’s practice by editing a slide together:

Try this exercise:

Make these abstract statements/questions more concrete:

• Can you please send me your report soon?

• Our results are worse than our forecast.

• Our customers want an innovative mobile app.

Thanks for reading.

Stephen

What is the cringiest corporate buzzword?