It's Time to Write
Turbocharge your career with this simple insight
Be the person who documents an organization’s thinking in writing. It's a very powerful position. This simple fact is surprising because on the surface it appears very low status. It’s easy for people to think you’re some sort of administrative assistant.
Early in my career at Google I watched junior people get tapped to take notes. They would attend and document Google Product Strategy (GPS) meetings. They would organize the chaos of company-wide Objectives and Key Results (OKR) planning. These always appeared to me to be tedious, but I wasn’t weighing the benefits. I'll try to do that here. These benefits apply just as well at a start-up of 5 people as they do in a 1000+ person company.
Benefits of writing in an org
Network/Reputation - when you write something down you become known as that person. You get invited to attend meetings which might be way above your pay-grade. These are meetings focused on product strategy, outside investors, or important customers. The other people who show up at those meetings are influential in the org and they begin to learn who you are. As your writing becomes known within the organization these people will come to you to ask for edits. You become a human router for the most up-to-date thinking of who knows/cares about what in the org. You quickly build your network with the people who run the show.
Opportunities - when you know how an organization thinks you also know what is important to the org. You may hear an off-handed comment about interest in an under-explored area. You could raise your hand to investigate it. You could write up your thoughts on the tradeoffs of this new initiative. Share this in private with the executive or founder who made the comment. If appropriate publish it to the org for comment. Your piece is now the canonical document for discussion on this new initiative. If it’s going to get budget/staffing/attention allocated you might now be the most credible person to lead this.
Understanding - writing is the process of thinking. By crafting and organizing the sentences you come to better understand the problems the org is facing and your own beliefs about potential solutions. If there are gaps in your understanding you can reach out to the people in the org who originally shared the ideas to get more context. This may cause you to change your mind or recognize nuance that’s often missed. You may come to understand the problem better than anyone else in the org by doing this work.
Power - it’s impossible to write without sharing some perspective. You may be trying to document facts, but you are including some facts and leaving out others. When you’re junior you should aim toward establishing trust in your writing. Aim to be fair and balanced. Aim to represent what happened. But the secret is that it's impossible to represent with complete neutrality. By owning the curation and framing you are also shaping the narrative. Savvy people will recognize the importance of your work and engage with you on it.
How to get started
Notice an issue that seems to generate a lot of internal discussion or debate. Write an open letter on Slack to curate both sides of the debate. See who chimes in and agrees or disagrees. Maybe there's a lack of understanding of the company strategy. Given the right discussions you could help capture/share this. What common questions does the broader team have that are yet undocumented? Offer to interview the leadership and writeup the answers.
Offer your ideas to a leader about how it would benefit the org to have more of their thinking and knowledge written down. Interview them on a topic to write a piece on on a question you believe everyone in the org wants to know. Help them get comfortable with the idea by ensuring they get final review.
These are a few ideas to get you started. What else have you seen work?
The video clip at the top is an excerpt from
in conversation with Dave Perell on my favorite new podcast: How I Write. Full episode here.
I have a colleague who has a rule of keeping emails five sentences or fewer. Can he summarize a one-hour meeting that way? Not comprehensively. However, our team is happy to sacrifice completeness for concision. In part because of his commitment to follow-up, he’s known as a change-marker in the org.