Does your Company have a Think-first Culture?
7 reasons to prioritise writing in your company culture:
Deeper work
Fewer meetings
Fewer interruptions
Increased productivity
Self-sufficient employees
High quality decision-making
These are achieved through:
Clear, written communications.
Is your time valuable? So is everyone else's.
💡 Writing-centric organisations cultivate a consciousness that everyone's time is valuable.
By prioritising writing, you prioritise thinking.
Clarity — Requires you to think and organise your thoughts.
Consistency — Writing tells everyone *exactly* the same thing.
Thoroughness — Helps communicate while raising fewer questions.
Being a "writing-first" organisation does not mean writing-only.
But it does mean investing in the written word, wherever possible.
And I don't mean monosyllabic one-liners in Slack!
Writing-first organisations tend to look like this:
📆 Fewer meetings
Meetings are focused and productive.
Meetings have written agendas and clear goals.
No meetings just for “status updates” that should be emails or group posts instead.
💥 Fewer interruptions
Read messages and documents at *your* convenience.
Give people documents instead of private lessons.
You don’t have to answer questions continually.
You don't have to wait constantly for answers.
Get all the pertinent information in one shot.
👩⚖️ Quality decisions
Decisions are based on thoughtful analyses and written arguments, rather than heat-of-the-moment emotions, or shoot-from-the-hip ideas.
Decisions are written down, along with the rationale behind them. This makes them easier to communicate clearly. (Some might not view that as a good thing, but this also enables decisions to be revisited later. Many times I have wracked my brains why a decision sounded good at the time.)
🤔 Deep Work
Fewer meetings + fewer interruptions → Deep Work
Deep work in a state of flow is where breakthroughs happen. Every interruption or switch of context requires another 20+ minutes of concentration just to get back in "the zone".
📄 Documented procedures
Procedures are documented, and don't just exist in some people's heads.
Everything is searchable and discoverable.
🕺 Independent, self-sufficient employees
Well written and comprehensive documentation allows present and future employees to become more self-sufficient, quicker.
Knowledge is democratised across the organisation. This is a double-win, because anyone can contribute too.
Q: Why is this graph exponential and not linear?
A: Because of Aha! moments and breakthroughs that become more common as more people think more deeply, more often.
Things you can do today:
👉 When writing an email or document, consider:
How will this piece of writing be used?
What questions might people ask?
What are the main takeaways?
Who is the target audience?
What is the main goal?
👉 If appropriate, share an online document in preference to writing everything in an email.
Shared documents are easier to comment on.
Additional participants can be added without having to forward them long email chains.
New employees will automatically gain access.
👉 When scheduling a meeting, share its purpose and agenda.
👉 Reject meeting invitations that don't make these clear.
If you have influence over the systems you use:
👉 Use a shared knowledge management system, e.g. Notion, Nuclino, Confluence, ...
If you have influence over the hiring process:
👉 Test candidates' written communication skills during the recruiting process.