Your Writing = Your Competence

“If officials can’t even get my correspondence and briefing notes right, how can I trust them to manage the Immigration program?”

When I heard a Canadian Minister of Immigration say that to the Deputy Minister, it piqued my curiosity.  What if officials approached the task of writing as a measure of their competence or credibility; how different might their attitudes and products be?

And then, because it’s always political in the public sector, even on a PublicSectorWriting.com website, I qualify – it was not the current Minister, not even the current government.

I share that exchange when I’m delivering public sector training programs as an example of how senior and elected officials may think about your writing (whether it is reasonable or not).