Encouraging a culture of written communication
Posts like this are published with regularity. And like all things that must be said again and again ("stay off the grass", "we're in this together"), we can assume the opposite somehow true: Most teams do not write much or do not write well.What posts like this do not address is the root cause of the problem: Writing is hard. Why is it hard? And how can people learn to write better? Those would be worthy topics for a longer post, which are not addressed in this one.Writing, like code, takes time to produce and consume. Like a product with friction in its onboarding, this decreases the likelihood that many people will ever reach the goal of writing clearly.Unlike code, most people think they can write. But the difference between writing, and writing clearly, is large.Unlike code, almost everyone has been "taught" to write, often by teachers who themselves do not write well, or do not have time to truly teach them, so they have a lot of bad habits. These include a reliance on cliches, ambiguous diction, and poor organization. The first flaw makes the reader zone out, the second vastly increases the amount of time it takes to consume and respond to writing, since the feedback loop is delayed.Personally, I do not believe that many people will ever learn to write well; I also don't think it's worthwhile to make them try. I think that organizations, in order share information well internally, should make certain people "writers" who get extract information from their colleagues and convey it to the team. They would be like the secretary in a meeting, but more ubiquitous. This would be part of their job description and KPIs and compensation.