Consulting Journal: Writing

Writing: Be consistent

by David Blakey

When you write as a professional, you can learn a lot from professional writers.

[Monday 24 December 2001]

In her article The Three Biggest Mistakes Made By Fiction Writers, Magdalena Ball states that these three mistakes are: a ‘patchy or uncertain narrative voice’, ‘poor characterization’ and ‘contrived description’.

There are three similar writing mistakes in many consultants' reports. Here are the equivalents for non-fiction.

Unassertive author

If you are writing a report as if the author is your firm or company, then you may have to use ‘we’, as in ‘We conclude that ... ’

Now, I have never liked this style. It is a continuation of the style of auditors' reports into consultants' reports. Many clients have told me that they feel that reports written in this way are impersonal. Consultants are real people. These clients spoke to these real people about their situation. They discussed the options and solutions with these real people. Then they got a final report written - apparently - by an anonymous organization.

The only time that my reports use ‘we’ is when they have been written jointly by a team of consultants. In this case, the fact that ‘we’ recommend something actually strengthens that recommendation as it states that ‘all of us’ recommend it.

Whether the report is written by an ‘I’ or a ‘we’, the author must be positive. I conclude, I recommend and I decide. I am not ‘forced to conclusions’. I am not ‘led to recommendations’. I do not ‘reach decisions’. As a consultant, I make events happen; events do not happen to me.

Having said that, I will always conclude, recommend and decide when these are the actions that I am expected to take and when I have been allowed to take them. If clients rule out some of my recommendations without a sound reason for doing so, I can then report in a way that states that this occurred. I will indeed have been ‘led to recommendations’. This will stand out in my reports because I will only use this phrasing in these particular circumstances.

Vague understanding

This is the non-fiction writer's equivalent of poor characterization. Instead of having a weakly defined character in a novel, consultants can have a weak understanding of their clients' sectors or markets or methods. In a novel, a writer can certainly have a character who is a weak person, provided that they write strongly about that character. A writer cannot write weakly about any character, no matter how weak the personality of the character is intended to be. Similarly, if a consultant comments upon any aspect of a client's business, then the consultant must have a thorough understanding of that aspect. It is easy to criticize aspects of which you have a deep knowledge. If your criticism is negative, then your knowledge will add weight to it. It is also easy to avoid criticizing aspects of which you have little knowledge. Your lack of criticism may be taken as approval.

Here's an extreme example. I worked with a young consultant who knew a lot about the theories of supply chain management but little of practical logistics. His draft report, which I reviewed, contained a long review of the client's interactions with its external suppliers and made several recommendations for improvement. His report described the client's warehousing and internal distribution systems without much comment. It seemed to approve of the client's current methods. In fact, I knew that the changes to the way that the client dealt with its suppliers would produce relatively small savings and that an overhaul of the internal systems would yield massive economies. We re-worked the report together, gathering more data about the warehousing and distribution systems. The client liked the report. It was more than ‘liked’. He said something like ‘I knew that our main problems were in stores, but people kept telling me to tweak our supplier contracts, and I knew that that wasn't where the main problems are.’

Just as in novels the characterization must be strong, whether the characters themselves are weak or strong people, so your reports must be based on strong research and strong knowledge, whether your conclusions are negative or positive.

Irrelevant description

According to Magdalena Ball, writing contrived descriptions ‘comes directly from writing class, where new writers are taught to describe everything in great detail.’ This sounds very like consultants. Many consultants are taught that their reports should contain complete descriptions. If I were called in to a client and asked to describe their web site, I could produce a descriptive report. But my clients do not ask me to do that. They ask me to find out why their web site is not making money or whether there are improvements that can be made to its design or performance. They ask me to describe future change, not current status.

It is certainly true that I shall have to find out what the current status is. It is not true that I shall necessarily have to tell them in great detail what it is.

If you really feel a need to prove to your client that you understand what their business is, then write an intermediate report that just describes their business. Your client will probably be unwilling to pay for the preparation of this separate report, but then you will be unwilling to charge them for it anyway, won't you? It's for your benefit, so why should the client pay? If it contains errors that the client corrects for you, then it will have been useful in confirming your knowledge of their business.

If you include this descriptive stuff in your final report, it won't look too good if your client finds any errors. First, if the client finds errors in the description, they may think that there are errors in your conclusions as well. Second, if you correct the description without making any changes to your conclusions, it may look as if your conclusions are generic, and not directly related to the client's own business. It will not matter if your final report is presented as a draft for the client's approval.

It is best to avoid detailed descriptions unless they lead to a point. You should check whether the point could have been made just as powerfully without the description.

[ List articles on Writing ] [ View printable version ]