Amazon has a strong writing culture. Every review meeting typically lasts an hour where the first 30 mins everyone sits quietly reading the document written by the meeting organiser. With red pens in hand, the attendees underline and take notes on the margins of the hardcopy. The documents are in narrative form with lots of objective details. Once everyone has read the document, the organiser takes feedback page by page. A simple, well structured writing culture that helps crystallise the thought process and gather feedback effectively.
For anyone new at writing documents, the first few of these meetings at Amazon can be brutal. But they also are great learning opportunities. And to be successful in the company, writing is a must have skill.
I worked at Amazon for more than 10 years and during that time wrote, read and reviewed hundreds of documents. These were quarterly business reviews, new project proposals, promotion packets, PRFAQs etc. Initially, I was quite bad but over time I learnt writing effectively. Mostly by reading and getting feedback from colleagues, bosses and team members. Those lessons in writing taught me to think with clarity and drive down to the essence of the topic of interest. I use those lessons everyday even after leaving Amazon. I am sharing some of those lessons here. Hopefully they help you be more effective at work.
Tell a story
Humans love stories. It’s a primal thing in our DNA. Our ancestors thousands of years ago sat around fires sharing stories communicating, persuading, and building trust amongst each other. That has not changed. If you can tell a well connected story you have already made a great argument and won half the battle. A compelling document is something that connects the beginning, middle and end. It should just flow. Any well written document follows this structure similar to an HTML doc which has its HEAD, BODY and FOOTER. So, nothing in your document should seem out of place and unwanted. Your audience should be able to connect the dots without realising it. You can do this by structuring the document in a very simple way. First tell them what you are about to tell them, then tell them that and finally you tell them what you just told them.
Another key attribute of a good story is how much people can connect to it. So when you are writing a document you have to be empathetic to your audience. It should pass the “What's in it for me” test. Everyone reading the document should be able to find something valuable for themselves. When someone can relate to the document, you have their attention. Now, they are more likely to get influenced by what you have written. So, remember to make sure your document tells a story.
The “So what” test
This is a great trick to make sure your document is something that your audience cares about. As the author of the document, you are too close to the details and sometimes you are unable to keep an objective viewpoint. It's the same way a film-maker shoots hundreds of hours of footage and finds it difficult to leave out anything. But an editor can bring that clarity and they know how to keep only the most important and required stuff. So to be an effective writer you have to be a good editor. Ask the “So what” question to every sentence that you write. For example, if you say “Our team delivered an automation tool in Q4”. Now ask So what? So what if your team built a tool? How does that help anyone? Now consider a rewrite of the sentence as “We built a tool that automated a business process that is now saving $50000 every month for the company.” This is a much more powerful sentence vs the former one. The “So what” test can also lead to completely deleting sentences that don't add any value to the document. It also forces us to quantify the impact in our narrative.
Don't ask for permission
Great leaders are confident about what they want to do. They don't ask for permission. Their writing should reflect that as well. At Amazon, we were encouraged to exude more confidence in our writing. So if you were the owner of a particular piece of software, instead of saying - we would like to do so and so, it was preferable to say we will be doing so and so. The difference is subtle. The latter framing exudes a lot of confidence and does not ask for permission. In the worst case, if the leadership disagrees with the point they can always ask for more details or not approve the proposal. But in most cases they don't reject what the author has written because they know that the owner of a software module knows what's best to do for its success.
So, if you are sure about what you are doing, write in a way which reflects that you are sure. Remember that you don't have to ask for permission.
Write in active voice
I had a bad habit of writing in a passive voice. It made my documents boring and come across as less confident. Make sure you are not doing this. Check if your sentences are written in a passive voice. Change them to active voices. They will be clearer, concise and sound much more confident.
No weasel words
Too often we use words in business writing that are subjective in nature. Business writing is about objectivity, clarity and driving alignment. Subjectivity in writing can lead to misunderstanding and ineffective communication. So, Amazon writing promotes use of numbers instead of subjective phrases. So instead of saying we had a great quarter, the Amazon way of saying it will be Our profitability went up by 15% this quarter to 115M.
So, next time review your writing and find words such as great, significant, poor etc and see if you can replace them in a more objective way. There are a lot of good articles available online about effectively eliminating weasel words. Refer to them.
Make your asks
Many documents are written in order to influence others to do something. It could be to get approval from leadership or to sign off on a design or to get approval for a budget or headcount. Lot of times authors shy away from making these asks clear and explicit in the document. The audience has to read between the lines to conclude the asks. Don't make it so hard. If you have asks that you want your audience to approve or provide feedback on then just create a section called “Asks” and make your asks clear in plain english.Your audience will thank you. And you will have a much higher chance of achieving the purpose of writing the document.
Use Appendix
Usually we feel the need to include every possible chart, comparison and datapoint in our document because we think they are all crucial. But including too many such details can be distracting for the reader. Therefore it's better to move all that information to the appendix i.e. a named section at the end. They can be referenced throughout the document. So anyone who is interested to look at the details can refer to the appendix section but for everyone else they stay on the crux of the document and don't get distracted by too many details. So next time you feel your document is overwhelming with information, try to move most of the details to the Appendix.
Peer reviews
This is the most important part of writing good documents. Getting your documents reviewed by others and you reviewing others’ documents is the fastest way to improve writing. Find a group of colleagues that you trust with honest and useful feedback and make them review your documents before you deliver it to your main audience. It’s surprising how valuable peer reviews can be. We miss too many obvious gaps until someone else reviews and points it out. Also reviewing other people’s documents helps you learn, get new ideas and improve your own writing style.
So there it is. These would be my most impactful tips for effective business writing. Try applying these in the next document that you write. And don't shoot for perfection. Just keep writing and you will become more and more effective with each iteration. I hope this was helpful.