Writing effective documents to influence teams and decision-makers is one of the essential elements of successful management. Additionally, in all of its forms, writing remains one of the primary vehicles by which a leader exercises leadership. Just like the other forms of communication, it must be coherent, complete, make a clear argument, and include appropriate decorum. This course focuses on these attributes as applied in all forms of modern written communication.
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This course can be taken for academic credit as part of CU Boulder’s Master of Engineering in Engineering Management (ME-EM) degree offered on the Coursera platform. The ME-EM is designed to help engineers, scientists, and technical professionals move into leadership and management roles in the engineering and technical sectors. With performance-based admissions and no application process, the ME-EM is ideal for individuals with a broad range of undergraduate education and/or professional experience.
Course 2 of 3 in the Technical Communication Specialization.
What You Will Learn
- Write for the educated layperson.
- Apply brevity and focus when writing.
- Address your reader's "hot buttons" (issues in which they are most interested) so as to become a more influential writer.
Syllabus
WEEK 1
Effective Managerial Writing
The best trait when working to achieve effective and professional writing is humility. Although all of us consider ourselves above-average writers, the fact is that there are only a few who rise above the rest with "perfect" documents that achieve "flow", and exercise exceptional word choice, correct paragraph sentence and paragraph structure, and perfect grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and hyphenation. These, then are the attributes and standards we hope to achieve starting with this first module. Our goal is that each of us rise above our current level of writing expertise.
WEEK 2
The Letter To an External Customer [The Formal Letter]
The most fundamental business writing exercise is exemplified by the "Letter To the External Stakeholder". In addition, there are the larger questions that are addressed here. These include the viability of letter writing as a business practice; the fundamentals including formatting, grammar, punctuation, paragraph formation; the importance of word choice; and the very important practice of proofreading. All of this is an important first step for improving one's writing skills.
WEEK 3
The Research Proposal
A common element of writing in business and industry is the Research Proposal. The "proposal" is a common tool in business and industry used to compete for future business. Proposals are not just statements of what you or your business are capable of doing; there will be many bidders who will make the same statement. Instead, your proposal must CONVINCE the customer that you are the best choice of vendor for their upcoming work. In the effort to convince them, you must write to the customer's primary concerns, create a clear mental picture for the reader of your proposal, be brief and concise, and be perfect in format and all of the other writing fundamentals. Therefore, I offer this module as support for this most-common form of business writing.
WEEK 4
The Executive Summary
The most useful written tool for the aspiring manager-leader is the Executive Summary. Although it is usually found as the first element of a proposal, it can also be used to summarize facts and recommendations for your supervisor. So, in this module, we'll learn about the value of the one-page executive summary and how to apply the skills we learned in weeks 2 and 3 to make our executive summary even better.
