Good managers write good

This doesn't match up with my career. The worst manager I ever had was one of the better writers. One of the better managers I've had rarely wrote and when he did it was solidly mediocre. The difference between them was what that the terrible manager was focused only on the interests of his superiors and peers, thinking it would advance him; the good manager obsessively worked to create alignment between thier subordinates interests and that of the greater organization.

The good manager has advanced and been successful as a 1st level manager. The terrible manager's goodbye letter was well written.

Writing well is an important skill that and all the good executive level (100+ report) managers I've had write well, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient for 1st level managers.

LOL, I assume the title is irony, or perhaps a riff on sassy (a word derived from sarcastic), because the author correctly says "Good managers write well" throughout the rest of the text.

Professor Patrick Wilson from the MIT [1] once wrote that:

"Your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas, in that order."

I think that's true. When I did my masters a few years ago, I enjoyed more the process of writing and editing than the research itself. I resonated with the thinking process behind the chain of ideas necessary to build a research document and this was surprising for me.

Writing has been something I left aside for some time until I decided to start my Cybersecurity newsletter [2], which has been a pleasure to write. Having the time to do it is the challenge.

[1] https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/emotional-intelligence-mit... [2] https://cyb3rsecurity.tips/

Writing doesn’t require humility. There are plenty of egocentric writers who do not handle feedback well. Writing benefits from humility.

I feel that the well-written prose is falling out of fashion. With the informational overload, people no longer enjoy writing and reading paragraphs of text. Even on YouTube, increasing the playback speed is probably the most used feature today. Sometimes, I feel this trend is becoming generational. Who knows, maybe a few decades from now, anyone who copiously writes and reads a couple of books every week would be considered a genius.

Maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy, but it feels to me that these days, beginner programmers tend to focus on learning programming languages, and only later (sometimes) they realize - to be a successful software developer, one has to focus on learning a human language - English et al.

I think we (techy people) could reverse this trend by creating a culture of writing. It becomes even more important with the remote working style and distributed teams. It should become a norm - for when to ship three lines of code, there would be a page or two, explaining the change in English.

Then who knows, maybe a few decades from now, anyone who copiously writes and reads a couple of books every week would be considered "a smart person working in tech".

> Why Are Good Managers Good Writers?

>

> [Every trivial thing except commmunication.]

It's the communication, dude!

You know what else they're great at? Presenting. Public speaking. Ad hoc improv because that is management - making sure everything will be ok no matter what happens.

I agree with the title-ish, in ways the author would not assert, though.

I claim "Good Managers Write Goodly." Not well. If they did that, they'd be tech writers or speech writers or . . . any kind of writer, really. The point is to communicate what you have to and not sweat the rest.

> Writing Is Thinking

This is pretty much it, IMHO. If you can produce original writing then you are capable of original thought. That’s a good starting point for any human endeavor, management included.

Note though that this capacity to think is just a necessary but not sufficient condition to be a good manager.

The author is patting themselves on the back a bit, and with regard to the painter, discussed in the closing sentence, loses sight of other non-written communication. It’s the broad strokes - in any form - that drive the largest impact.

Indeed, the quality of writing does “taper with the level of interaction needed”, but in the opposite way described.

As a middle manager, writing is critical for conveying all the necessary information. Get the work done, this way is right, and at the highest speed! At the highest levels though, it’s less useful - though exceptions to the rules (e.g. Warren Buffet using his soapbox to great effect) do exist.

I like these articles. But, what I'd really like are some examples of good and bad writing. This would actually help (as opposed to explaining the process behind it). Anyone have any examples?

I'm not sure there's anything special about writing in the context of managing that can't be claimed for communication in general. The ability to form words and sentences to convey ideas, meaning, and intent should be expected to correlate positively with management skill.

I suppose there's something to be said for the durability of writing, which makes it quite a lot harder to say something and then claim later to never have said it, or to have said something completely different.

Well, I guess I just undermined my own point.

I think this is why modern day politicians are so bad. They need to be so good at rewriting history that they cannot put their thinking in clear writing. I read letters and essays written by Abraham Lincoln and was struck by the clarity of thought and the power of his words. I don't think I've read any writings of recent politicians that make me feel the same way.

some good managers write well, done bad managers too, and sone good managers write poorly. Possibly there are some correlations, but I’m certainly not convinced

The title reminds me of that classic grammar Nazi quip:

Me: hi, how are you?

You: I'm doing good thanks. How are you?

Me: (facepalm). Mother Theresa did good, I'm merely doing _well_.