Professional and Analytical Skills
Analytic Writing 101
Techniques to Master Writing
Instructor: Chris Savos
Who Is This Course For?
If you’re expected to provide insightful written products to your executives or external customers, then you’ve come to the right place. This course is for any professional whose writing could use improvement, which, if we’re being honest, is almost everyone. Whether you’re evaluating policies, assessing risk, or analyzing foreign countries, this course will help you create clear and concise written products. Its 10 tips target common writing problems and will quickly raise your writing game.
The tips come from the instructor’s nearly 30 years of experience creating, reviewing, and teaching others how to write effective analytic products for demanding customers in the public and private sectors. If you consistently follow these tips, you’ll avoid the majority of pitfalls that lead to extensive edits and products that go unread or misunderstood.
Students
Most undergrad and grad students rarely receive training in how to write like a professional instead of an academic. As a result, they face a steep learning curve when starting their careers. This course offers a head start in honing professional writing skills before the first day on the job. It will also help students create stronger papers that will stand out to professors tired of reading sloppy prose.
Professionals
Any professional who writes for a living—and most analysts fall into that category—can stand to improve their writing. New professionals mounting that just-mentioned learning curve can accelerate their development with this course, and experienced ones can always use a quick refresher.
Managers
To effectively review professional writing, you must focus on the big picture as well as the details, and this course will help you do both. A critical part of being a reviewer is teaching through your edits, and the 10 tips provide a simple framework for developing your employees’ basic writing skills.
Win Over Your Skeptical Customer
Your customers have a host of reasons not to listen to you. For you to succeed as a professional, you must overcome these reasons, and the 10 tips will help you.
They must read
Your customers are very busy and looking for any excuse not to read yet another paper or memo. If they don’t take the time to read your work, you have failed to help them and wasted your time. This puts a premium on your being concise.
They must understand
If your customers decide to read your product, but they are confused by your prose and arguments, you have failed to provide value. Your writing therefore must be clear.
They must believe
Even if customers read and understand your writing, if they doubt your arguments, evidence, or attention to detail, they will not believe you, and you will have wasted their time. You and your writing must be credible.
What You'll Get
Video
Content
Course
Transcript
Downloadable
Worksheets
Downloadable
Summary Tips
What You'll Learn
In this course, you’ll learn:
- The proper mindset a professional needs when approaching any writing assignment
- The challenges of a skeptical customer and how to overcome them
- The fundamental elements of all good professional writing
- How to avoid the most common mistakes in professional writing
- The picky elements of writing that can destroy your credibility with your customer if you get them wrong
Course Content
Introduction
Tip 1 – Adopt the Proper Mindset
Tip 2 – Embrace the Inverted Pyramid
Tip 3 – Use Evidence Effectively
Tip 4 – Prune Your Prose
Tip 5 – Use Passive Language Carefully
Tip 6 – Avoid Squishy Words
Tip 7 – Choose the Right Word
Tip 8 – Punctuate Properly
Tip 9 – Beware Pronoun Confusion
Tip 10 – Minimize Unit Modifier Mayhem
Bonus Tip – Self-Edit Like a Boss
Conclusion
Meet Your Instructor
Dr. Chris Savos
Dr. Chris Savos is dedicated to helping analysts everywhere build great careers. In addition to developing courses for Proficiency1, he designs and delivers unique in-person leadership, analytic, and professional skills training programs to a range of clients in the Intelligence Community and the private sector.
Chris has extensive experience as an executive manager, leader, and analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where he worked for 22 years and earned the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal, the Agency’s highest award for career service. Chris successfully led analytical units that covered sensitive issues in the Middle East and South and East Asia. He was also the CIA’s first Lead Talent Officer for the Directorate of Analysis and oversaw talent management and development programs for the Agency’s analytic workforce.
Chris knows what makes analytic products work, what causes them to fail, and how to teach analysts to improve their writing. He has reviewed thousands of products as a leader of analytic units at the CIA and many more as an analytic writing instructor since leaving the Agency.
Chris earned a BA in government from Dartmouth College and a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You can learn more about him at www.chrissavos.com.
Try a sample lecture
Professional Writing Is Different Than Academic Writing
This lecture is part of the JTG Proficiency1 course Analytic Writing 101: Techniques to Master Writing with your instructor Chris Savos.