“If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” – Jack Welch
“How would you like to be my adjutant?”
The question caught me by surprise. I had about six months left in command, and we were at the railhead in the midst of deploying forces into Bosnia. I hadn’t really given much thought to my next job, but being the brigade’s personnel officer had never once crossed my mind. On the other hand, he was someone I truly enjoyed working for, and that mattered.
“I don’t know all that much about the personnel side,” I told him.
“I’ve got that covered,” he replied. “I need you to write for me. I want you to write everything that goes out of that headquarters.”
I’d been writing for years, but this was the first time that ability would land me a job. It wouldn’t be the last.
How toO Write Gooder
I don’t exactly know where or when I developed my skills as a writer. I was a junior in college, a third-year engineering student, when an English professor pulled me aside and challenged me to write. “You’re in the wrong major,” he told me. “You need to be developing this skill, putting it to use. You should be publishing already.”
It was clearly too late to change majors, so I did the next best thing: I put down my Hewlett-Packard calculator and started pounding out my thoughts on the word processors in the computer lab. I wrote and wrote a lot.
Learning to write well is a lot of work. It doesn’t come easy. Like anything else in life, you have to put in the effort to yield the results. In a 2018 blog post, Scott Young reflected on what it takes to write well, the work necessary to become the writer you think you can be.
1. Write a lot.
Frankly, there’s no substitute for the repetitions. Like any other endeavor, the more time you put in, the greater the return on your investment. Writing is no different. In addition to long form writing, I commit to at least a few thousand words each week on other projects.
2. Read a lot.
I learned this nugget in college, when an English professor showed us the research. The more you read, the more cognitive osmosis kicks in and you start to unconsciously mimic the styles you read. Just be sure to read more than one author.
3. Edit a lot.
Editing doesn’t come naturally. The advice I offer a lot of budding writers is to read their work aloud. If what comes out doesn’t sound like what’s in your head, then you edit until it does.
4. Have something to say.
There’s no substitute for a good story. But stories have a beginning, middle, and end. A lot of people tell stories that never come to a point. Don’t be that guy.
5. Get feedback.
Find a sounding board and strap in. Even if you get everything else right, your writing might sound like Cletus the slack-jawed yokel. We all need that level of feedback to save us from ourselves.
This will get you started, but you’ll need to develop the habits that drive you onward. As Young urges, write every day if you’re not already. Once that habit takes root – even on a small scale – your writing will improve as your output grows. Like any competent bodybuilder will tell you, your biceps won’t grow by admiring the weights. You have to put in the reps.
The Competitive Edge
Translating that into a competitive advantage takes time and effort as well, not to mention a fair amount of strategy. In business terms, writing becomes your value proposition, that unique attribute that differentiates you from your competition. And, since effective communication is essential to success in any organization, most leaders recognize and understand the necessity of having strong writers close at hand.
Writing is also a rare skill. Most people are average writers at best; many are far worse than that. It’s an odds-on bet that you remember the bad writers you’ve encountered, but the really good ones are a lot harder to identify. That creates a niche that you can become your competitive advantage. Now you just have to position yourself in that niche.
- There are countless opportunities to put your writing skills on display in the workplace: reports, white papers, evaluations, and the list goes on. Each of them presents a unique opportunity for you to demonstrate your writing ability. A writer who is clear, concise, and direct garners both a lot of attention and the appreciation of the leaders who recognize your value to the them and the organization.
- Early on in my career, I set a goal to publish an article once per year. It was what author and entrepreneur John Doerr calls a BHAG – a big, hairy, audacious goal. In an era of print media, I earned my share of rejections, but I kept pushing. As a lieutenant, I won a nation-level writing award that caught my battalion commander’s attention; a month later, I was the most junior principal on his primary staff. Publishing will gain notice, for good or bad. You have control over that outcome, so choose your words wisely.
- Good writing can translate into captivating speaking. Volunteer for speaking roles and seek out opportunities to put your storytelling skills to work in front of an audience. In most cases, my public speaking engagements are the direct translation of something I’ve written. That allows me to shift between communication modes without necessarily developing unique content – I step in front of an audience with the story already written in my mind, which means that I don’t need notes and can give my full attention to the people present.
- Get social – as in social media. As you build a body of content – something that all writers eventually do – frame it with a deliberate communication plan. Share that content in captivating bursts. Build a network around your ideas. Forge a community of followers. Forget about a personal website – create a blog or newsletter to collect and share your thoughts with a wider audience, then publish and post that content on a set schedule. And let social media do its thing for you.
- As a writer, what you give back makes a difference. Whenever I encountered a writer with potential, I challenged them to write more, to build a personal legacy through their writing. The next generation of writers is already out there, so it’s up to our generation to show them the way, to help them translate that skill into a distinct competitive advantage. That begins with a commitment to mentoring, and the investment of time and effort that entails.
Pull those threads and you are very likely to find yourself in a position where people don’t just seek out your writing, they open doors for you in the process. But it all starts with writing… something. To paraphrase Andy Dufresne from The Shashank Redemption, “Get busy writing or get busy dying.”
