How to Write More Effectively: Stop Pretending You're Charles Dickens at Work

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The email arrived at 3:47 PM on a Wednesday. Seventeen paragraphs. Single-spaced. Dense as a Sydney traffic jam in peak hour. The subject line read "Quick update on project status." I counted the words—892 of them—just to see if my estimate was right. Close enough. This wasn't a quick update; it was a dissertation disguised as workplace communication.

And that's the problem with most business writing today. Everyone thinks they need to sound like they're penning the next great Australian novel when all they really need to do is get their bloody point across.

I've been training professionals across Melbourne, Perth, and Brisbane for the better part of two decades, and I can tell you this with absolute certainty: 73% of workplace communication problems stem from people trying to sound smarter than they actually are. The other 27% comes from people who are genuinely smart but can't explain their way out of a paper bag.

The Disease of Corporate Speak

Let me paint you a picture. Last month, I received a proposal from a potential client that included this gem: "We are seeking to leverage synergistic opportunities to optimise our human capital acquisition strategies whilst maintaining operational excellence throughout our organisational ecosystem."

Translation: They wanted help hiring people.

This isn't sophistication—it's linguistic masturbation. And yes, I know that's crude, but sometimes crude gets the point across better than flowery business jargon that makes everyone's eyes glaze over.

The corporate world has developed this bizarre addiction to complexity. We use "utilise" instead of "use." We "action" things instead of doing them. We have "learnings" instead of lessons. It's like we're all competing in some sort of twisted verbal Olympics where the most convoluted sentence wins gold.

The Australian Way: Say What You Mean

Here's what I love about working with tradies and small business owners across regional Australia. They don't muck around with words. A plumber from Ballarat will tell you straight: "Your pipes are stuffed, mate. Gonna cost you two grand to fix 'em properly." No fluff. No corporate nonsense. Just honest communication that gets results.

But put that same plumber in a room with white-collar workers, and suddenly he's second-guessing himself. Wondering if he should say "substantial infrastructure deterioration requiring comprehensive remediation" instead of "stuffed pipes need fixing."

Don't. Just don't.

The most effective communication training I've ever delivered focused on one simple principle: clarity beats cleverness every single time. Your readers don't want to decode your message like it's some sort of workplace cryptogram.

Why Simple Wins (Even When You Think It Doesn't)

I used to be one of those consultants who thought big words made me sound more professional. Fresh out of university, armed with a business degree and a head full of theoretical nonsense, I'd write reports that could put an insomniac to sleep. Complex sentence structures. Multisyllabic terminology. Passive voice everywhere.

Then I got a reality check from a client in Darwin. Bloke ran a logistics company—successful one, too. He handed back my fifty-page recommendations document and said, "Mate, I've got twelve minutes to read this before my next meeting. Can you tell me what you want me to do in twelve minutes or not?"

That changed everything.

Simple writing isn't about dumbing down your ideas. It's about respecting your reader's time and intelligence enough to present those ideas clearly. When you strip away the unnecessary complexity, what remains is pure communication gold.

Consider these examples:

Instead of: "We need to facilitate a comprehensive dialogue regarding the optimisation of our customer service delivery methodologies."

Write: "Let's talk about improving customer service."

Instead of: "Please find attached the documentation pertaining to our quarterly performance metrics."

Write: "Here are this quarter's results."

The second versions aren't less professional—they're more professional because they actually communicate.

The Hidden Cost of Bad Writing

Poor workplace writing costs Australian businesses millions every year. Not just in time wasted deciphering unclear emails, but in actual mistakes that happen when people misunderstand instructions, deadlines get missed because expectations weren't clear, and relationships suffer because tone gets lost in translation.

I worked with a mining company up in Kalgoorlie where a miscommunicated safety procedure nearly resulted in a serious accident. The original memo was three pages of technical jargon when it could have been three bullet points. Sometimes clarity isn't just about efficiency—it's about safety.

But here's the thing that really gets me fired up: we're teaching this backwards in business schools. Students learn to write like academics instead of communicators. They're rewarded for complexity instead of clarity. Then they enter the workforce and wonder why nobody reads their reports.

The Email Epidemic

Let's talk about emails for a minute because that's where most workplace writing happens, and it's where most of it goes horribly wrong.

I see emails every day that read like legal documents. Formal salutations, multiple conditional clauses, and sign-offs that take up more space than the actual message. Meanwhile, the poor recipient is scrolling through their iPhone trying to figure out what the sender actually wants them to do.

Professional development training should include a mandatory module on email writing. Not email etiquette—that's different—but actual writing that gets results.

Here's my controversial take: most workplace emails should be under 100 words. If you need more than that, you probably need a phone call or a meeting instead. Email is for quick information exchange, not for complex discussions or detailed explanations.

The Meeting Minutes Massacre

And don't get me started on meeting minutes. I've seen documents that read like court transcripts, capturing every "um" and "ah" instead of focusing on decisions made and actions required.

Good meeting minutes answer three questions:

1. What did we decide?
2. Who's doing what?
3. When is it due?

Everything else is just noise.

But somehow we've convinced ourselves that verbose documentation equals thoroughness. It doesn't. Thorough documentation captures what matters. Verbose documentation captures everything and therefore captures nothing useful.

I once reviewed meeting minutes that were fourteen pages long for a one-hour staff meeting. Fourteen pages! The actual decisions made could have been summarised in half a page. The rest was just... words. Lots and lots of unnecessary words.

Breaking the Cycle

So how do we fix this? How do we cure ourselves of the disease of overcomplication?

First, read your writing out loud. If it sounds like something a robot would say, rewrite it. If you wouldn't say it in conversation, don't write it in an email.

Second, use the grandmother test. If your grandmother wouldn't understand what you've written, it's probably too complicated. And before you tell me your grandmother has a PhD in theoretical physics, remember that even brilliant people appreciate clarity.

Third, embrace the power of the full stop. Short sentences work. They create impact. They're easy to read. They don't need justification.

Fourth, cut the qualifiers. Instead of "I think perhaps we might consider possibly looking into the potential opportunity to maybe improve our processes," just write "We should improve our processes."

The Technology Trap

Here's something that's making the problem worse: autocorrect and AI writing assistants. These tools are teaching us to write in their voice instead of our own. They suggest longer words when shorter ones would do. They add unnecessary complexity to simple ideas.

I'm not anti-technology—far from it. But I am anti anything that gets between clear thinking and clear communication. Use the tools, but don't let them use you.

The same goes for those email templates that sound like they were written by a committee of lawyers. "I hope this email finds you well in these unprecedented times..." Stop. Just stop. Say what you mean and move on.

The Personality Problem

One thing I've noticed working with different organisations across Australia is that companies often strip personality out of their workplace communication training. They want everyone to sound the same—bland, corporate, safe.

That's a mistake.

People connect with people, not corporate entities. Your writing should sound like you, not like a press release. Obviously, you need to be professional, but professional doesn't mean personality-free.

Some of the most effective business writing I've seen comes from companies that let their people's voices come through. Virgin Australia does this well. So does Boost Juice. Their communications feel human because humans wrote them, not marketing departments trying to avoid any possible controversy.

Getting Started Tomorrow

If you want to improve your workplace writing immediately, try this: before you send any email or document, ask yourself, "What do I actually want the reader to do after reading this?"

If you can't answer that question clearly, your writing probably isn't clear either.

Then ask, "What's the simplest way to communicate this?"

Not the most impressive way. Not the most comprehensive way. The simplest way.

Your colleagues will thank you. Your clients will thank you. Your future self will definitely thank you when you're not spending half your day clarifying what you meant in emails you sent that morning.

And here's my final bit of advice: stop apologising for being clear. I see people add disclaimers like "Sorry for the brief response" or "I hope this makes sense" when they've actually written something perfectly understandable.

Clear communication isn't something to apologise for—it's something to aspire to.

The business world needs more writers who can cut through the noise and actually communicate. Be one of them.