We were just talking about doing a good job with your written products, because they are going to be around for a long time:
But the first time something goes out of your immediate group, or up the chain in your organization, spend the effort to make it as clean, tight, and clear as possible. Get […]

If you talk to successful people in any walk of life and ask them how they became successful, almost all of them will include the contributions of one or more mentors in their list. One of the best ways to develop, to learn, or to do anything new is to work closely with someone who […]

Writing is communication that lasts. If you don’t believe me, Google for the phrases antiquarian books or rare manuscripts. You’ll see books, codices, manuscripts, scrolls, and tablets going back millennia.
With storage going for pennies a megabyte and getting lower every year, you should just plan on everything staying around forever. Technical white papers are stored […]

Quick review: the only essential trait of a leader is that a leader has followers. Everything else is commentary.
I’m certainly not the first to say this sort of thing, and on the surface it looks like a simple statement. It is simple to say, but the ideas behind it are profound.
It means, first, that no […]

Leadership starts with adherence to the principal principle: be great at what you do.
It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter where you do it. Some are called to be great in a way that changes the world, others are recognized with Nobel prizes. Most of us are not given such high callings or […]

The act of writing is fundamentally the act of communicating information to someone else. This sounds simple enough, right?
Here’s a challenge: pick up a technical article in your field. Or, even better, pick up one in a field you don’t know much about. What do you see? Does the author organize his material in an […]

It is nearly impossible to overstate the benefits of being able to write well.
In my experience it is more important to be able to write well than to speak well, at least until you reach senior levels of your organization or are interacting regularly with the public directly as a representative of your company.
Writing’s twin […]

While I expect that this will change a lot as time goes on, I do have a rough idea for the way I see things going with this site over the next several months.
I’ll be concentrating on touching on many of the topics from the book, so if you want more detail or want to […]

(If you are just tuning in, you might want to take a glance at Part 1 to catch up.)
Heady stuff. Do you, um, have anything a little more about, you know, me?
Why yes, I do.
Understanding how to be an effective leader is good for your career. The stuff we’ll talk about in the coming months […]

So maybe you already knew you were leading in at least a small way. Maybe you didn’t. But why should it matter either way, and why it is so important for scientists, engineers, and all the folks who make the technology we use everyday?
Let me start with a confession about a trait you may have […]