On Writing Well By William Zinsser Summary

v William Zinsser, in his book, On Writing Well, makes the argument there is a correlation between being a good writer and effective critical thinking skills. He’s right. Writing is a fundamental skill that both enables critical thinking as well as, if done correctly, can clearly articulate a message, vision or intent. Furthermore, just as there is a direct correlation between a person’s ability to think critically and write well, the same can be said regarding critical thinking and effective strategic leadership. Leadership at the strategic level offers unique opportunities as well as challenges. One of the greatest challenges is the need to influence persons outside of a direct reporting chain. Some common traits that
Aside from English majors, and possibly some of them as well, writing is poorly trained across all levels of academia. However, I’m going to focus on an area where I have the most experience, the Professional Military Education (PME) system. When looking at our current process for educating Army officers, we see institutional challenges in the approach with regards to teaching both writing and critical thinking skills. In his article, Education for Critical Thinking, Colonel Williams discusses that while our schools profess to teaching officers how to think, not what to think, that is not entirely
I would propose a two-prong approach. First, get graduate level writing back into the officer basic and career courses as well as the mid-level and advanced enlisted schools. Establishing that capability early as a foundational competency is critical to the future leadership population who will be faced with large amounts of unknown unknowns. School programs of instruction should transition to more open curriculum that stresses critical thinking and writing skills, vice memorizing doctrine. Deliverables at the end of assignments should be both papers as well the associated briefings to ensure officers drill both their written and oral communicative