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Does your Company have a Think-first Culture?
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Does your Company have a Think-first Culture?

Itzy Sabo's avatar
Itzy Sabo
Aug 17, 2023
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Does your Company have a Think-first Culture?
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7 reasons to prioritise writing in your company culture:

  • Deeper work

  • Fewer meetings

  • Fewer interruptions

  • Increased productivity

  • Self-sufficient employees

  • High quality decision-making

These are achieved through: 

  • Clear, written communications.

Is your time valuable? So is everyone else's.

💡 Writing-centric organisations cultivate a consciousness that everyone's time is valuable.

By prioritising writing, you prioritise thinking.

Clarity — Requires you to think and organise your thoughts.

Consistency — Writing tells everyone *exactly* the same thing.

Thoroughness — Helps communicate while raising fewer questions.

Being a "writing-first" organisation does not mean writing-only.

But it does mean investing in the written word, wherever possible.

And I don't mean monosyllabic one-liners in Slack!

Writing-first organisations tend to look like this:

📆 Fewer meetings

  • Meetings are focused and productive. 

  • Meetings have written agendas and clear goals.

  • No meetings just for “status updates” that should be emails or group posts instead. 

💥 Fewer interruptions 

  • Read messages and documents at *your* convenience.

  • Give people documents instead of private lessons.

  • You don’t have to answer questions continually.

  • You don't have to wait constantly for answers.

  • Get all the pertinent information in one shot.

👩‍⚖️ Quality decisions

  • Decisions are based on thoughtful analyses and written arguments, rather than heat-of-the-moment emotions, or shoot-from-the-hip ideas.

  • Decisions are written down, along with the rationale behind them. This makes them easier to communicate clearly. (Some might not view that as a good thing, but this also enables decisions to be revisited later. Many times I have wracked my brains why a decision sounded good at the time.)

🤔 Deep Work

  • Fewer meetings + fewer interruptions → Deep Work

  • Deep work in a state of flow is where breakthroughs happen. Every interruption or switch of context requires another 20+ minutes of concentration just to get back in "the zone".

📄 Documented procedures 

  • Procedures are documented, and don't just exist in some people's heads.

  • Everything is searchable and discoverable.

🕺 Independent, self-sufficient employees

  • Well written and comprehensive documentation allows present and future employees to become more self-sufficient, quicker.

  • Knowledge is democratised across the organisation. This is a double-win, because anyone can contribute too.

image.png

Q: Why is this graph exponential and not linear?

A: Because of Aha! moments and breakthroughs that become more common as more people think more deeply, more often.

Things you can do today:

👉 When writing an email or document, consider:

  • How will this piece of writing be used? 

  • What questions might people ask?

  • What are the main takeaways? 

  • Who is the target audience?

  • What is the main goal? 

👉 If appropriate, share an online document in preference to writing everything in an email. 

  • Shared documents are easier to comment on. 

  • Additional participants can be added without having to forward them long email chains. 

  • New employees will automatically gain access.

👉 When scheduling a meeting, share its purpose and agenda.

👉 Reject meeting invitations that don't make these clear.

If you have influence over the systems you use:

👉 Use a shared knowledge management system, e.g. Notion, Nuclino, Confluence, ...

If you have influence over the hiring process:

👉 Test candidates' written communication skills during the recruiting process.


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By Itzy Sabo · Launched 2 years ago
Pragmatic, hard-earned advice for professionals at the intersection of software engineering, tech management, leadership, and business.
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