Ernst and Young
Professional service firms rely on intellectual capital and original ideas. Thanks to Emphasis, ‘Big 4’ accountancy firm Ernst & Young are distilling these into reports that win business.
The problem
Ernst and Young research teams aim to position the company in the industry as ‘thought leaders’. So their reports need to be tight and authoritative. But too many analysts were producing overwritten reports with no definitive viewpoint – nothing for clients or the media to latch onto.
“The way people are educated to write by academia means there’s a lot of deductive writing which takes a long time to get to the point. There is a lot of descriptive writing, waffle and technical language which almost disguises the clarity of thought,” explains Simon Rhodes, head of European Research and Analysis at Ernst & Young.
Emphasis solution
Emphasis designed a training programme that focused on how to express a strong opinion and influence readers, but keep it succinct. It included techniques for creating an attention-grabbing introduction and a concise, powerful executive summary, and also examined how to present technical information effectively to a non-technical, strategic audience. A series of six-monthly follow-up reviews reinforced the training.
The benefits
Aside from improving writing skills, the training has given Ernst & Young staff the tools to think clearly, as the methods encourage analysts to focus on their key messages.
“Where people have been trained and kept it up, the improvement has been vast. In my team, success is measured in terms of the impact. We produce a lot of insightful reports that have been picked up by the press. Last year we had 78 press articles from my unit alone,” says Simon.
And the follow-up sessions have ensured analysts keep on thinking about clarity and precision of writing style.
“I was impressed with the ongoing coaching. You go on a course and you think it’s brilliant but then you don’t do anything with it in the future. There was a whole coaching process where Emphasis would review written work and give feedback,” says Simon.
The lasting effects
Emphasis has now been working with Ernst & Young for ten years and became the preferred supplier of writing-skills training four years ago. The firm re-branded 18 months ago and identified good business writing a core company value.
“Unless you can communicate clearly to the end customer, no-one is going to take you seriously. Emphasis is extremely good at raising the bar in terms of clarity of communication,” says Simon.