How do you write a white paper that helps readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision? In this series I analyze white papers to see what lessons I can learn for my own writing in terms of format, language, and structure.
Here I look at “The New Work Rules for High-Performing Teams in a Hybrid Work World” by Keith Ferrazzi, a business-to-business (B2B) marketing white paper that promotes the author’s books and consulting services with an interesting idea: Instead of just returning to the workplace post pandemic, why not integrate remote work in a new way that
“…reduces meetings by 30%, amplifies business innovation, and expands remote team collaboration”?
-Subtitle of the white paper
I first heard about this white paper on NPR’s Marketplace Morning Report, which did a great job describing how remote work and virtual meetings could be the instruments of real change at the workplace. So I clicked the link to the actual document to see for myself. Following are my take-aways, starting with the likes.
Three Parts of the Paper Worth Keeping
1. Visual Features in Every Page
Much like academic grant proposals, the author(s) left a lot of spaces for easy reading. They also made sure to use a different visual feature on each page to keep the freshness on every page. This is why you find the following features: on
page 2, a figure with a key question as caption,
page 3, the cover o the book the paper is promoting,
page 4, a box with a background picture highlighting three key percentages and a numbered list,
page 5, four large percentage numbers and a box highlighting the quote from a satisfied customer,
page 6, short paragraphs and a set of bullet points, and so on.
2. Conversational Voice
The authors wanted to sound like they are talking to the readers directly. This is apparent in two ways:
- Abundant use of modal verbs (a total of 68 instances with “can” used 19 times and “will” used 12 times). Verbs—like can, could, will, must, etc.—describe situations, set conditions, and control mood. They are also used most often in conversational English (see featured image in the present narrative tense post).
- Abundant use of questions (a total of 17 instances), especially strategic, direct questions that empathizes with the readers. Consider the passage in the following snapshot of page 10 of the white paper: the paragraph itself is three sentences, all questions that readers of this document would most likely ask themselves. Very effective.
3. What You See Is What You Get.
This paper never lost focus of its target audience. Here target audience means executives looking to maximize office productivity—not underlings trying to improve office interactions. Even though the paper mentions empathy for one’s subordinates, it does so as a necessity that can be engineered. It’s discussed in the 113-word-long “Personal-Professional Check-In” section on page 9.
But this kind of focus is a good thing for a B2B documents. You want to reach your target audience, but you also want to let others know that the product/services being promoted in not for them. So if you are looking to revolve cultural friction or generational misunderstandings at the office, you will know to stay clear.
Three Parts to Be Scrapped
1. Name Dropping Ad Nauseam
“Harvard” appears on five different occasions, either followed by “Business School” or “Business Review.” Other names such as Oxford and Stanford, National Instruments and Unilever also appear for no other reason than name dropping. Eight out of 16 text pages have names.
2. Buzz Words Ad Nauseam
The first third of the paper exposing a problem that needs to be solved was easy to follow. The last two thirds explaining the paper’s solutions are a mess; this part is composed of two sections with five to six subsections each. Try reading the last section and corresponding subsection titles of the paper listed back to back in the following box:
The above titles tell a story, but it’s impossible to make sense of it, because the titles are larded with buzzwords the authors don’t explain well if at all. For instance, “asynchronous” is used 16 times throughout the paper at key locations, but the authors never mention the reason for this unusual word choice. It not only makes them sound like they don’t know why they picked this word themselves, but it also makes the paper hard to understand.
Conclusions
- Yes to space-creating visual features, conversational voice, and focus on target audience.
- No to blatant name dropping.
- Need to read more B2B white papers to assess buzz word situation.
Thanks!