‘I’m going to reveal three rules that will transform your writing, increase your influence and generate results.’ I paused and moved closer to the centre of the room, where executive MBA participants had gathered for the communication session I was facilitating at an FT-ranked business school.
‘You know these rules and have used them intuitively’, I conceded, ‘But many years ago, I decided to put them all in a simple framework that’s easy to remember. Rule one…’
And so, my lecture often goes. Some audience members would lean forward, expectant and focused. The moment would then become anticlimactic because, when I reveal the rules, they appear unimpressed until I break down each component and explain the connecting thread. They then understand the power of the framework.
We’re in the AI age, and generative tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot can do the heavy lifting with brainstorming and writing. So, there’s the temptation of believing that improving your writing is no longer required — since a well-engineered prompt can now generate an excellent output that you can plug into that email, proposal or client brief.
But that position is flawed because critical thinking and sharp, human-generated writing remain essential to influence.
AI tools are incredibly useful, but they’re what they were designed to be: tools, not replacements for your thinking, nuances, and even writing quirks.
The danger of relying on AI-generated writing
For business writing, the real danger of relying on AI-generated text is not only that your material, albeit polished, becomes stripped of its essence. What is more concerning, as preliminary findings published by Cornell University suggest, is the risk of reduced cognitive abilities and poorer recall of your points.
Here’s the impact on your career and business:
Good writing stems from clear thinking. When you delegate both to AI, you gradually weaken the analytical capability that makes your communication persuasive.
However, the Three Rules of Business Writing™ are the antidote to the humdrum, bland writing that has become so pervasive online that any hint of originality is celebrated. With the framework, you avoid the predictable, repetitive, formulaic outputs and craft persuasive materials aligned to the audience and context.
Good writing stems from clear thinking. When you delegate both to AI,
~ Lucille Ossai
you gradually weaken the analytical capability that makes
your communication persuasive.
The Three Rules of Business Writing™
The Three Rules of Business Writing™ is an integrated framework that aligns your writing with your audience’s needs, keeps it simple, brief, and clear, and ensures flow and grammatical precision.
The framework, a proprietary asset, is also embedded within the Global 4-Domain Communication Skills Rating Tool™, along with the ABF Formula™ and the Flexible Communications Strategy™. The model does more than help you refine your writing; it ensures your writing is structured and moves people to act.
Just like the ABF Formula™, the individual components of the framework reinforce each other, and together, they ensure the completeness of your piece.
Each rule reinforces the next, and as a unit, they determine whether your writing informs or actually influences.
1) Focus on your audience to win support
As I’ve advocated for over a decade, knowing your audience and aligning your communication with their expressed and unspoken needs ensures your writing is relevant. And relevant writing gains quicker buy-in.
This step applies to all contexts and professional levels — from entry-level to the C-suite.
Whilst the context may change and should be adapted for stakeholder groups and regions, the Rule remains the same.
Before you begin your audience analysis, ask the foundational question to zero in on the critical information that matters to your audience, not good-to-know data points.
For example, simply emailing colleagues to request they complete an important questionnaire before a certain date is insufficient to gain full cooperation without multiple reminders. But address the WIIFM premise (the what’s-in-it-for-me angle), explaining that completing the task will ensure their per diem application is processed within x hours, and you’ll tap into a relevant, beneficial outcome. The compliance rate is likely to increase significantly.
When communicating across borders, writing that aligns with the audience’s cultural norms or expectations reduces tension and enables quicker cooperation. For example, business writing norms in Nigeria and Ghana follow a hierarchical style, with full acknowledgement of formal/social titles. However, in the US and Canada, a direct style (complete with first names) is standard. Cultural agility seems like an insignificant issue until you lose a contract in the UAE because your writing offended potential partners by failing to account for the indirect, high-context, relationship-oriented culture.
That’s why knowing your audience is the first rule of effective communication across different domains, whether in nonverbal communication, speaking, writing, or leadership.
Next, avoid the misguided belief that your writing should hinge on important points you need to communicate. Whilst that premise may be true (e.g., writing to inform/educate, contest an issue, or demand a change), writing solely for your preference won’t move any audience until you address their WIIFM angle. This may be unfair, but it’s what differentiates business writing from creative writing, where the writer’s focus is on self-expression.
The most effective business writer balances what they must communicate with what the audience needs to understand, whilst framing the entire message as serving the audience.
If you consider this realisation unbalanced, you’ve finally decoded what makes your professional writing relevant — and actionable.
Always prioritise the audience’s concerns in your writing to gain their support.
After shaping your writing to align with your audience’s needs, structuring your piece using the 2-Step Writing Blueprint™ is essential for a logical sequence.
But even structure is not enough for guaranteed results; you need to ensure the content is presented in a way that moves people to act.
The most effective business writer balances what they must communicate
~ Lucille Ossai
with what the audience needs to understand, whilst framing
the entire message as serving the audience.
And that’s where the three beacons shine, as explained next.
2) Use the three beacons to increase persuasiveness
a) Making your messaging simple
Don’t try to be clever; aim to be understood.
Use simple terms, eliminate the jargon, define terms, and don’t assume your audience knows what you mean. ‘ROI’ may be everyday language to you, but what if you’re writing to people not steeped in business or finance?
If writing to international stakeholders whose first language isn’t English, refrain from using sports and military metaphors that don’t translate well (e.g., ‘touch base’ and ‘stick to your guns’) or idiomatic expressions that might be taken literally (e.g., ‘cook the books’). Strip the complex and write for a 12-year-old.
And no, simple doesn’t mean simplistic. It’s actually difficult to keep your documents simple because you must understand them thoroughly to distil them into simple terms.
Anyone can make an issue complex. Excellent communicators make the complex simple. But they also need to respect the reader’s time and get to the point early.
b) Keeping your writing brief
Getting to the point quickly in the first two lines or the first (short) paragraph is important to capture and keep the reader’s attention. Resist the urge to bury the important point between ‘interesting’ material.
Whether writing for your colleagues, manager or senior leaders, knowing your point and stating the purpose concisely makes you appear more credible and believable.
Then, when you pair a concise style with confident terms such as ‘I recommend’, ‘Isn’t now the time to x?’ and ‘We seek board approval for y to ensure z’, your persuasiveness increases.
One of the little-known secrets of influencing without a formal title is to discard unnecessary words whilst still ensuring completeness. Develop the habit of covering everything you need to with fewer words; it’s the style of executives and leaders, and it gets your writing noticed.
To further expand the point of conciseness, understand the reason an executive summary is now standard in (long) reports. Your writing should mirror that premise, so write concisely. When, not if, the reader skims your content, they should still be able to grasp essential points without committing to the full read.
Clean, concise pieces are another hallmark of writing that influences decisions.
Go a step further to ensure your piece is unambiguous and addresses the so-what question.
c) Keeping your writing clear
Clear writing follows clear thinking. But your writing won’t be clear if you struggle to make coherent, logical links between what you understand and how you communicate that to your audience.
For your writing to be clear, you must first understand the content. That’s why writing about a topic you’re unfamiliar with or have little understanding of becomes an unproductive task.
I’ve been blogging monthly for over 14 years. What I’ve realised is that if I’m spending too much effort to string sentences together for a seamless flow, that section isn’t worth my time and energy. Bestselling author Stephen King advised you to ‘kill your darlings’ for good reason. Cutting material that weakens your premise ensures sharp, clear writing that advances your strongest position.
In the business context, your writing is also unclear unless it contains a call to action, which will be one or more of the following three desires:
- what your audience must know
- what you want them to feel
- what you direct them to do
Your call to action should appear twice in your documentation, at the beginning and at the end (rephrased to highlight the consequence of inaction or delayed action).
Clear writing is evident from the flow of your words to the logical conclusion of your piece, leading readers to the outcome you’d planned.
Clear writing can be felt, and emotions persuade.
Clear writing follows clear thinking.
~ Lucille Ossai
Ensuring your piece is refined for flow and grammatical accuracy completes the refinement process.
3) Proof and edit twice
The third Rule in this framework can sharpen or diminish your credibility. With the abundance of AI tools, it’s almost a sin to turn in written material that lacks a logical
flow or is rife with grammatical errors.
The point here isn’t the debate on whether using some punctuation marks, such as the Oxford comma, is unnecessary or whether the em dash is a telltale sign of AI-generated content. (I find the latter explanation ridiculous because I’ve been using the em dash as a persuasive tool for over a decade, long before AI).
The bigger point is that written work with multiple grammatical errors, incorrect punctuation, or poor constructions gives the unfortunate perception of a lack of professionalism.
Since you will be judged by your writing, with the reader deciding in seconds whether to take you seriously, not being intentional about this step is the quickest way to lose influence.
To ensure your writing is clean and professional, at least two proofreading and editing rounds are required:
a) First round — for structure, flow and logic
Ask yourself the following:
I) Is the structure defined?
Have you formatted your email, report, or memo with headings, subheadings, and bullet points to avoid walls of text that cause cognitive strain?
II) Is the flow seamless?
Does one paragraph flow to the next, or do sections appear to be self-contained, with an inconsistent connecting thread throughout the document?
III) Is the logic evident?
Do timelines, numbers, arguments for correlation/causation, and sequencing of points (first, second, third…) all make sense to the reader?
b) Second round — for convention and grammatical precision
For convention:
I) Have you addressed the recipient by the appropriate professional/social title and used the communication style (consultative or directive) expected in the culture?
II) Have you chosen the correct writing register (semi-formal or formal) based on the audience and context?
For grammatical precision:
I) Have you read through the entire piece aloud, word for word, to catch spelling, punctuation, and grammatical mistakes — including the following prevalent errors:
- comma splices
- excessive capitalisation of common nouns
- wrong use of homophones (e.g., cite/sight and son/sun)
- mixing confusable words (e.g., economic/economical, and uninterested/disinterested)?
II) Have you used an AI editing tool (Grammarly, ProWritingAid, etc.) to run through your entire piece after your manual review? Have you then re-read your written work a final time to correct the wrong words/punctuation that the AI tool may have applied?
You don’t need to become a grammar pundit, but you do need to have a decent knowledge of grammatical conventions before knowing when to break stiff rules to ease comprehension and improve retention.
A document that has been edited for flow, appropriateness, context, and grammatical accuracy sharpens the argument it presents and elevates the writer’s credibility.
Conclusion
Just as I declared in the executive MBA sessions, the Three Rules of Business Writing™ are simple, and you likely use one or two of them regularly.
However, the framework’s usefulness lies in the integration of its components. For routine and high-stakes writing, the Three Rules adapt to the audience and context, sharpening your credibility and increasing your perceived professionalism.
Use this model in the AI age to differentiate your writing from engineered, predictable outputs, so you can influence people and get results.
Note:
The commercial launch of the Global 4-Domain Communication Skills Rating Tool™ is loading…
If your organisation is looking to measure, benchmark, and strengthen communication capabilities using the Global 4-Domain Communication Skills Rating Tool™, please email Lucille@LucilleOssai.com.
Assessment-led communication development programmes and keynote speaking engagements are also available.
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N.B: First image is courtesy of Jess Bailey via Pixabay. Second image is courtesy of Thomas G. via Pixabay. Third and fourth images are courtesy of Gerd Altmann via Pixabay.