Do you struggle with writing?  Or do you see signs of ineffective writing in your organization?  Have you ever considered the effect of poor writing on your business?

Writing is a significant part of every professional's job.  With the onset of email, instant messaging and the Internet, most of our communication is done via a keyboard---which means good business writing is as important as ever.  Unfortunately, poor writing is one of the biggest problems in business today.  And studies have shown that poor writing contributes to miscommunication, low productivity, lost revenue, poor customer relations, and a damaged reputation.

Mastering the Art of Business Writing will help you strengthen the impact of your writing and overall professional image by teaching you the habits of good writing.  This comprehensive seminar will help you identify your audience; overcome writer's block; craft a clear, simple message; and check for details like frequently misspelled and confused words.  From beginning to final copy, this seminar will help you get it all together and put it down in a way that gets results.  Even "experienced" writers can learn secrets for writing effective letters, memos, emails and reports.

Key Training Points

• Identify the value of good writing
• Plan your writing
• Apply the "Five Cs" of good business writing
• Recognize and correct frequently misspelled and confused words
• Discuss common e-mail problems and solutions

If you could reduce wasted time by just five minutes every hour, productivity would jump 8.3 percent. Efficiency levels would also rise as staff members began to devote more time to completing critical tasks. In companies with successful time-management strategies, teams meet project deadlines more often and managers spend more time pursuing opportunities.

Participants quickly determine where to focus their time management efforts and gain practical guidelines to improve their time management skills for greater personal and professional success.

• Discover personal time management strengths and weaknesses
• Determine customized strategies to improve time management
• Focus on priorities and increase productivity

It is important to systematically look at the work that you do for ways to improve work processes. In this seminar participants will acquire skills that will enable continuous improvement on the job and identify effective critical thinking and proactive problem solving skills needed to increase job efficiency.

• Identifying the difference between chronic and special cause problems in the workplace
• Identifying the root causes and effects of problems through charting and diagramming
• Translating a current workplace problem into a process map
• Verifying and implementing corrective action plans for handling problems and preventing recurrence

Employees who can make sound decisions quickly have the power to significantly streamline their individual work processes, increase job efficiency and reduce organizational costs. This seminar helps participants master a systematic approach to making better and faster decisions.

• Avoiding common decision-making traps
• Increasing the speed and quality of decisions
• Making major and minor decisions confidently
• Identifying the negative results of a poor decision-making process

How do people in organizations define "accountability"--a word typically seen in a negative light?  Is it blame?  Is it taking credit when things go well?  Is it complex piles of procedures, paperwork, cost control and red tape?  Accountability is not a way to control people?instead, it?s a way for them to take charge of their own actions and efforts to be more effective, and to promote better relationships throughout the organization.

The "cycle of accountability" is a three-step process that, when handled properly, will ensure the clarity and completion of any task.

Step 1. Responsibility is a before-the-fact mindset of ownership of a task or job.

Step 2. Empowerment is taking personal action to ensure an agreed-upon result.

Step 3. Accountability is a personal willingness, after-the-fact, to answer for the results of your behaviors and actions.

Use this training as one component of a management or staff development program, as part of a new product or service initiative, or as part of ongoing project management support.

• Define Responsibility, Empowerment, and Accountability, and describe the role they play in achieving project or task success.
• Describe how clear agreements build the framework for maintaining focus and overcoming obstacles.
• Discuss guidelines for managing agreements, including renegotiating or updating them when necessary.
• Discuss how to hold ourselves?and others?accountable for our results, no matter how things turn out.

Dealing with everything on your plate can be challenging.  What should your high-priority responsibilities be?  How will you---and others---know how well you are performing them? 

• Rate and rank work responsibilities based on the organization's needs.
• Identify options for handling high-priority responsibilities that may go undone.
• Describe ways to use goal setting as a leadership tool.
• Translate high-priority responsibilities into intended outcomes with verifiable terms.
• Use these processes to enhance communication with others about priorities and goals.

Today's jobs rarely include detailed instructions, relying instead on the initiative of individual employees to figure out how to get their work accomplished. In this seminar employees are empowered to create effective plans, involve others, ask for help and prioritize their many competing tasks in order to deliver the results needed for an organization to be successful.

Key Training Points

• Planning and organizing for results
• Responding and managing constantly changing priorities
• Demonstrating ways of working effectively with others to increase productivity