The "first rule of humour in business writing"

--> or how to avoid crashing and burning

My last few posts have been about the use of different techniques to add a bit of humour to your business writing.

And I’ve talked about how these techniques can work from a business perspective: building a bond with your readers, making the other side of an argument look ridiculous, highlighting your strengths.

But as I was writing those articles something struck me. And with an utter lack of humility I’ve called it “ the first rule of humour in business writing”.

You see, the thing about those business benefits of humour is they only happen if the humour lands. If your readers smile, snigger or chuckle.

And yet the surest way to kill any chance of your humour landing is to focus on those business benefits. To start by thinking “I’ll add a bit of self-deprecation here, it’ll help me bond with my reader” or “If I over-exaggerate here it will help me win the argument”.

The best - nah, the only - way to make humour work is to focus on the humour. To only add your aside or your comic triple or your self-deprecation if you feel it’s funny.

Not because of the business benefit. Not because of how you think it’ll make people see you.

Just if it feels funny to you.

If you start from the perspective of “hah, if I put this here it’ll be funny” you’ll get the business benefit that comes from humour.

If you start from the perspective of “I should add something funny here to get [business benefit]” it won’t work. it’ll feel forced.

It’s an example of what I call being Strategically Ruthless but Tactically Generous.

In this case, Strategically Ruthless means that in the cold light of day I take the decision to add humour to my writing for the business benefits. And I learn some of the techniques.

Tactically Generous means that when it comes to the actual writing, I wipe all thoughts of the business benefits from my mind and just focus on doing the best I can to add a bit of humour to my writing to make my readers smile.

If I hadn’t been Strategically Ruthless I wouldn’t be thinking about humour and I wouldn’t have done the reading and thinking beforehand to allow me to actually add the techniques. It puts me in the right place at the right time with the right skills.

Being Tactically Generous means I have the right mindset in the moment to make that preparation work. If I was Tactically Ruthless and was thinking “what’s in it for me” as I wrote, then the humour would be forced and uncomfortable. My motivations would be obvious. But by focusing instead on “is this actually funny?” more often than not I can get it right.

Strategically Ruthless, Tactically Generous is a a principle I’ve used again and again. It’s something I discovered (maybe even invented) when I figured out how to make networking work for me even though I really didn’t enjoy it.

I’ll share that example next time as the principle is really powerful and worth understanding.

- Ian