Are MBAs Good Writers?

It’s tough goings for a writer nowadays. In post-Recession America, students majoring in English, Creative Writing, and (sadly) Journalism degrees are less likely to find employment in their desired industries.

Part of it is job climate, part of it is just a matter of too many people getting degrees in subjects with weak job markets.

MBA Writers in India Find Success

As writers struggle stateside, wordsmiths are thriving elsewhere, especially in emerging markets like India. Even more interesting is the fact that these writers aren’t folks holding literary degrees — they are MBAs and holders of business degrees.

An article from OZY highlighted a few of these paperback writers. In India, a “best-selling” book would sell around 20,000 copies as recently as five years ago. But as the piece points out, “the Indian paperback mass-market publishing world is booming. And the people raking it in seem to have something in common: business backgrounds.”

Let’s meet some of these writers, shall we?

• Ravi Subramanian, author of “If God Was a Banker,” was, you guessed it, a banker.
• Anuja Chauhan, a writer attending the Zee Jaipur Literary Festival, is famous for creating India’s Pepsi slogans.
• Best-selling mythological novelist Ashwin Sanghi holds an MBA from Yale.
• Amish Tripathi, an MBA who’s sold around 3 million copies of his “Game of Thrones”-esque fantasy series, will have his books turned into Bollywood and Hollywood productions.

These business minded writers use their MBA skills in a variety of different ways. Ravinder Singh, a romance writer, has told audiences he’s “unashamed” of his social media techniques, like promoting targeted Facebook ads when he’ll be in town for a reading. Tripathi couldn’t find a publisher for his novels initially, leading him to self-publish and get creative with marketing strategy, such as leaving samples of the first chapter of his book in bookstores and funding a movie trailer.

These writers attribute their ability to write to their organizational and research skills, like Tripathi who uses complex character maps, Excel spreadsheets and piles of writer self-help books to get things in order.

Despite the fact that these authors each have their own literary styles, one thing is consistent — their works are mirrors reflecting the thoughts and sentiment of the growing Indian middle class.  

American MBA Writers… Not So Much

But in America, there’s a perception that MBAs can’t write. According to the Wall Street Journal,

While MBA students’ quantitative skills are prized by employers, their writing and presentation skills have been a perennial complaint. Employers and writing coaches say business-school graduates tend to ramble, use pretentious vocabulary or pen too-casual emails.

This isn’t just a rumor either — this is backed up by statistics. The Graduate Management Admission Council — the organization that administers the Graduate Management Admission Test, says average essay scores on the GMAT fell to 4.4 out of 6 in 2010, from 4.7 out of 6 in 2007.

A GMAC spokesman told WSJ that the drop in test scores may be partly attributable to an influx of international applicants taking the exam. According to GMAC, in the 2009-2010 testing year, 136,918 international students took the GMAT, up 35 percent from 2007.

What are American MBA Writers doing wrong?

The WSJ outlined a few issues with how American business students write:

• MBA students have bad writing habits, such as using complicated words over simple ones, or not stating the main point of an email early in the message.
• According to managers at General Mills, business-school graduates are data-savvy but don’t always communicate marketing research effectively.
• Too many young people write like they text now, using incomplete sentences and improper grammar. A piece in US News & World Report says that students often bring “bad habits” from e-mailing, text messaging, and social media use to the classroom and to their jobs.

Some American business schools are trying to fix these bad habits through coursework. According to Bloomberg Business, “business schools are starting to recognize that MBAs’ rusty composition skills could benefit from a brush-up,” like the University of St. Thomas’ Opus College of Business, which requires that all students take a writing and spoken communication course during their first year.

Rosanne Bane, who has taught the Opus’ Business Writing Communication Lab for the school’s full-time MBA program, outlined a few tips for MBAs to improve their writing ability:

• Don’t Be Long Winded: Students in business school have a tendency to “just add fluff” to boost the word count of research papers. Bane suggests taking out unnecessary words or flowery phrases. “In business writing, conciseness is a prime virtue,” Bane said. “It’s going to be a long report anyway, so don’t make it any longer by throwing in words or phrases you don’t need.”
• Know Your Medium: Not everything should be written like an email! According to Bane, email communication is “context poor” and doesn’t always express the senders’ intended intonation or emotional state — making a phone call, writing something in a letter or memo format or talking to someone in person can often be a lot more effective.
• Understand Your Audience: Students should step back before diving into a report and think about who will be reading their essay or report. What do readers already know? What will the people need to know? What is the significance of the information you are trying to communicate? “Identify the purpose of your communication, consider the context of the situation, and then select the message accordingly,” Bane said.
• Practice Writing Often: This one is obvious: If you don’t use it, you lose it! Bane suggests setting aside 5 or 10 minutes for “free writing” time a day. “I encourage them to do this so that they are able to practice and develop their skills,” she said. “It lets you know where you need to focus your attention.”

regions: Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago / Dallas / Houston / London / Los Angeles / New York City / Philadelphia / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Toronto / Washington, DC

About the Author