12/14/2006

The write way to do business

According to estimates from the University of California at Berkeley, businesses around the world churn out approximately 232.9 billion documents every year. Add to that the roughly 31 billion emails people send around the world daily, with only a portion of it for business, and you're talking about a lot of writing. And it's increasing. Some estimate the number of paper office documents alone increased 43 percent between 2002 and 2003. No doubt about it--we're writing more in business.

Business schools have taken note. This recent Associated Press story discussed the Fanning Center for Business Communication at the University of Notre Dame, run by my colleague Jim O'Rourke. As Jim notes in the article, writing can create serious issues, especially when it comes to making money and saving money in business. Two studies by Watson & Wyatt suggest that communication influences the bottom line. Their 2003-04 study found that "A significant improvement in communication effectiveness is associated with a 29.5 percent increase in market value."  Their 2004-05 study found "evidence that communication effectiveness is a leading indicator of financial performance."

As we track these trends and studies at the Tepper School of Business and the Center for Business Communication (CBC), the management communication faculty continue to work hard to advance effective communication strategies. The CBC supports strategic communication in organizations and business schools by encouraging research, promoting best practices, and fostering training and development programs that help students and people in business communicate more successfully.  

In Tepper School business writing courses, the faculty teaches our undergraduates and MBAs how to develop a clearer understanding of what business audiences need and want in documents. We work with them to create the kinds of upfront scaffolding, structuring, and planning necessary to create stronger business communication. We also use our writing assignments to provide a vehicle that fosters critical thinking as students examine business problems and communicate business solutions. And, since people in business are constantly selling ideas, plans, proposals, and other ideas, our faculty pushes them to enhance their rhetorical abilities, making sure they have a stronger sense of how to persuade and convince business audiences.

We're happy to see some nice results. In 2004, Tepper students competed in a series of business plan competitions, and brought home over $352,000 in prize money, and Tepper became the first business school to ever have two of its student teams win both first and second place in the prestigious international Moot Corp competition, beating out teams from around the globe. This year, a surgeon, coming back to school to complete an MBA, led a Tepper team and took first place again in this World Cup of business plan competitions. Perhaps more importantly, these Tepper students have communicated successfully enough to have raised several million dollars from venture capitalists, and the companies are up and running - a winning combination of solving business problems and then selling the solutions.

(By Thomas Hajduk, the director of the Center for Business Communication and an associate professor of management communication and entrepreneurship in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon.)