tips
Last week I wrote that perfection comes from including only the essential. Let me explain one way to apply that thinking to an audit report or similar (as taught to me when I worked at a Big Four firm). Let’s say that the work being reported has identified 10
tips
A common piece of advice for aspiring creative writers is to read as much as you can. I think we can apply that to accountants who want to improve their writing skills. They should read finance reports and documents written by others, inside and outside their organisation, but I would
tips
Allow me to make some suggestions. First, your boss or mentor or a client tells you so. I suspect that is quite rare. More subtle is the case where your boss or mentor or client does not tell you outright but asks questions that you thought your document had answered.
tips
A minister caused a stir on Wednesday with a hand-written resignation letter. Writing by hand can help with creativity but realistically I suggest you write the first drafts in a text-editor app rather than with a pen. Here’s why. A text editor app is just you and your words.
tips
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint Exupéry This is one of my favourite quotations. I’m applying it to writing finance reports but it can be applied to anything. One
When I teach online or in-person the institution that hired me usually wants feedback from students/learners. I’ve learned that many students or learners are uncomfortable about being asked to give feedback. It feels like they are criticising. I ask them for advice instead. The end result might be
Whether writing an email or a 20-page report we tend to think of it needing a beginning, middle and end. This encourages to adopt a (chrono)logical structure along the lines of: Here’s a problem ==> This is the cause ==> Analysis of possible solutions ==> recommended solution The
writing
Things work out alright in the end. If things aren’t right then it’s not the end. Here’s a story about how things worked out for me as a writer. I see my career in two, roughly equal, parts. The first 19 years was a conventional career in
tips
If a picture paints a thousand words, how many words does a table of data save? However, a table is a wasted opportunity if the reader skips over it. I have a tip to make the tables in your documents have more impact? As accountants we often want to include
tips
Here’s the first of what I expect will be very many posts with tips on using Microsoft Word (and many of them will be directly useful in other word-processing apps like Google Docs and Apple’s Pages). Once you have got all the right words and numbers in the
writing
I’m going to pivot. I’ve been a public finance accountant for 30 years and up to now I’ve written posts relating to public financial management. Actually, what I am really interested in is writing. So from now on… I am going to post tips, stories and resources
When I was a finance director I came to realise that I did not write very much. True, I would review reports and other documents created by the accountants and others who worked for me, but I rarely created a document. That grew to become more and more frustrating. Frustrating