All agreement from me, but there's something hidden behind the circularity of "Good writers are rare because they're really good thinkers, and good thinkers are rare."
Where does good writing/thinking come from? Can it be cultivated? I think we're doing a lot to destroy it in tech, where writing has long been undervalued until it can be swallowed and regurgitated, seemingly cost-free, with LLMs.
Does anyone think of growing their own writers in all their departments? In universities this is called a "writing across the disciplines" program, and it's the only scientifically grounded way to ensure graduates are reasonably literate with measurable impact many years later. (The results speak for themselves, but very few universities have these programs.)
Do founders ask if — perhaps — they lack writers because they have a culture that punishes thought, clarity, and the focused time investments good writing/thinking takes? My sense of the norm is mediocre companies unwilling to pay writers (or cultivate them) the way they do with, say, software developers. Typically, "Writer" is assumed to fit in "Marketing" or else it has a "Technical" put in front of it and gets associated with some very important but possibly spectral technical documentation.
Is there any company where designers and developers, marketing and engineering have a deep and productive right-left brain synergy — especially in an extremely complex and incredibly fraught field like security? What if common divisions and silos between these fields exist not because of hard-wired personalities and brains but because leaders have failed to form, nurture, and guide healthy, balanced teams and cultures? They've probably got plenty of good communicators and clear thinkers in the closet who have learned not to bother, who left, or who never were let in.
Inserting a good writer when the need's been realized is too little, too late. A better thought for founders would be, "How do I nurture clear thinkers and communicators across the company?"
All agreement from me, but there's something hidden behind the circularity of "Good writers are rare because they're really good thinkers, and good thinkers are rare."
Where does good writing/thinking come from? Can it be cultivated? I think we're doing a lot to destroy it in tech, where writing has long been undervalued until it can be swallowed and regurgitated, seemingly cost-free, with LLMs.
Does anyone think of growing their own writers in all their departments? In universities this is called a "writing across the disciplines" program, and it's the only scientifically grounded way to ensure graduates are reasonably literate with measurable impact many years later. (The results speak for themselves, but very few universities have these programs.)
Do founders ask if — perhaps — they lack writers because they have a culture that punishes thought, clarity, and the focused time investments good writing/thinking takes? My sense of the norm is mediocre companies unwilling to pay writers (or cultivate them) the way they do with, say, software developers. Typically, "Writer" is assumed to fit in "Marketing" or else it has a "Technical" put in front of it and gets associated with some very important but possibly spectral technical documentation.
Is there any company where designers and developers, marketing and engineering have a deep and productive right-left brain synergy — especially in an extremely complex and incredibly fraught field like security? What if common divisions and silos between these fields exist not because of hard-wired personalities and brains but because leaders have failed to form, nurture, and guide healthy, balanced teams and cultures? They've probably got plenty of good communicators and clear thinkers in the closet who have learned not to bother, who left, or who never were let in.
Inserting a good writer when the need's been realized is too little, too late. A better thought for founders would be, "How do I nurture clear thinkers and communicators across the company?"