No Wrongs when you Write

When it comes to writing, Harry Bruce (Knoxville '59) knows his business. And he tells it with no hesitation:

*"Most of the speeches top executives give stink."

*"Like anything else in business, composing based on ignorance does not work."

*"Stacks of nouns and adjectives waste more of the reader's energy than they save of the writer's."

These are just a few excerpts from Bruce's latest book, A Short Guide to Business Writing, co-written with UT Knoxville English professors Russel Hirst and Michael Keene. The three hope that their short (224 pages) text will be adopted in the boardroom as well as the classroom.

Its lessons -- if sometimes painfully direct -- are necessary, Bruce says. In fact, he says, "The idea for this book came from the real world of bad experience."

It started in 1975, shortly after Bruce became senior vice president of marketing at Illinois Central Railroad. (He is now retired CEO of Illinois Central.)

"I oversaw a department of six or seven hundred people. Many of them, at least 100 or more, had advanced degrees. Yet they were very poor communicators," Bruce says. When he asked for reports, Bruce says, what he got was -- Sloppiness. Wordiness. Numerical and typographical errors. "One day a report landed on my desk with a great big coffee stain on it. I hit the roof!" he says.

After returning to earth, Bruce began conducting for the worst offenders a command-performance, after-hours seminar on business report writing. After a few weeks, his subordinates began producing better reports. But the problem of bad business writing continued to plague Bruce.

"I was dealing with people who had advanced degrees in economics and marketing, but they had not been properly schooled in the writing of the English language. I was struck by the fact that they came from business schools around the country. I thought that perhaps this was a national problem. And the more I reviewed it and the more I read about it, the more I found that other companies were faced with the same problem," Bruce says.

He decided to write a book about business writing. "I had already written a handbook on transportation and another one on statistics as applied to the field of physical distribution. I thought, 'Well, I'll crank this out just like I did the others. But it didn't crank very well," Bruce admits.

After 12 years of struggling with a manuscript, Bruce says, "I was about ready to throw it in the wastebasket." Instead, friends on the UTK business faculty recommended that Bruce get some help.

Bruce's co-authors are Dr. Michael Keene, who directs UT Knoxville's technical communication program in English, and Keene's colleague Dr. Russel Hirst, an assistant professor. Both have extensive experience teaching technical and business writing and "were able to fill in the gaps that I couldn't," Bruce says.

The final version of the book is a guide to producing the basic forms of business communication: writing, revising, and designing a report; writing and delivering speeches; and writing letters and memos. In addition, there is a guide to creating a portfolio of accomplishments, a document listing specific career triumphs that Bruce says he has used "since I was a junior nobody at U.S. Steel." Finally, the book includes an extensive list of sources for business research.

Thanks to Bruce, the book also contains its share of cartoons and pithy sayings. Hirst is the amused owner of a file drawer full of clippings mailed him (sometimes daily) by the irrepressible businessman. From sayings in The Wall Street Journal ("Most of the speeches top executives give stink") to cartoons in The New Yorker, little that was business writing-related escaped Bruce's attention.

Prior to publication, A Short Guide was twice tested by students in UT Knoxville's MBA. program. "The sense we got after the second time is that it was pretty much 'right,'" Keene says.

Hirst, who is using it in professional writing and technical editing courses, says his students are also pleased with it. But the authors hope that their no-nonsense approach will also play well on the trade market. "We hope this is a book that managers will read. That's why it's short," Keene says.

The book's message, Bruce adds, is "must" reading: "The failure to communicate effectively can mean the loss of business. Loss of business can mean loss of job. And that's pretty serious."

Business communication needs to be direct, as illustrated by this cartoon from A Short Guide to Business Writing, co-authored by Harry Bruce and UTK English professors Russel Hirst and Michael Keene. Drawing by Matthew Atkinson.

Harry Bruce, Russel Hirst, and Michael Keene, co-authors of A Short Guide to Business Writing, recommend that applicants compile a Portfolio of Accomplishments, or POA, in addition to a resume.

The POA is described in detail in Chapter 11: "Unlike a resume, the POA is not just a tabular listing of your past job titles and dates of employment. It is a work of prose that uses chronological order, complete sentences, and a narrative, past-tense construction to describe the work you did and the results you achieved."

Harry Bruce, retired CEO of Illinois Central Railroad, spearheaded the POA chapter. He believes that a POA gives an applicant an edge: "All resumes have the same approximate length, paper color, and typeface. A POA enables you to distinguish yourself from other applicants."

Bruce and co-authors write, "A typical POA reads more like a personal memoir or a magazine interview than like a rŽsumŽ. The pronoun 'I,' which never appears in a typical resume, is not only permissible, but obligatory . . . . A strong POA focuses on the writer's demonstration of how he or she made a difference on the job."

A POA may be used at any stage of a career, Bruce says. "Many people think, 'This is fine for vice presidents or CEOs, because they've got something to say.' But I've been preparing a POA since I was a junior nobody at U.S. Steel."

The POA chapter includes "A word to the wise: Once you have compiled a POA and made up your mind to use it, do not send it to your prospective employer's personnel or human-resources department . . . . Share your POA only with the manager to whom you are going to report and with whom you are interviewing for the position."

A Short Guide to Business Writing is published by Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 07632.