The Executive Action Writer: How To Set Your Mind to Crafting A Text That Evokes The Response You Want (Volume 1)

In today's fast-paced world of instant, omnipresent and byte-size hyper-communication, most business texts are ephemeral by design, hence not worth the effort of thoughtful shaping. Right? Wrong! In The Executive Action Writer, Herman Vantrappen demonstrates that businesses need quality writing more than ever before. The ultimate purpose of a business text is to persuade the reader to take action. And many texts - due to their poor quality - fail to do so. Borrowing insights from social psychology and behavioral economics, this book advises businesspeople how to craft texts that will evoke the response they want from their target audience. Most advice on business writing explains in great detail how to write a technically flawless text. This book is different. It focuses on the writer's mindset rather than the technical construction of the text, thereby relying on two premises. First, that most writers in business are fairly intelligent and always short of time. Second, that they generally do not need technical perfection for their texts to serve their purpose, i.e. to persuade the reader to take the action required. The author builds on more than 20 years of client experience at a premier strategy consulting firm to offer six keys to high-quality business writing.

Herman Vantrappen has been a consultant and Director with Arthur D. Little for more than 20 years. Founded in 1886 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Arthur D. Little is a global management consultancy, linking strategy, innovation and technology to ensure business success for its clients. Herman Vantrappen has also been the editor-in-chief of Prism, the firm's bi-annual journal that is distributed to a large group of senior executives in industry and the public sector worldwide (see www.adl.com/insights/prism/). He has been one of its most prolific contributors, writing on topics such as business strategy, innovation management and government policy. He has also conducted and published interviews with the Chief Executive Officers of global corporations such as Heineken, Atlas Copco and Henkel. In addition, Herman Vantrappen has authored many pieces in a wide variety of other journals, magazines and newspapers. Several of these have been translated into Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. He has appeared and spoken on television, radio and at conferences. Herman Vantrappen obtained an M.B.A. from Carnegie-Mellon University's Tepper School of Business (Pittsburgh, USA) and an M.S. in Engineering from Leuven University (Leuven, Belgium).