Interview Summary

In the interview the interviewee gave background as to his writing education, in college he attended a Gen-ed english as an undergraduate and while in graduate school took a writing course that required extensive report writing.  The interviewee's first job out of college was administrative assistant to the president for the corporation Wolverine World Wide.  The title required financial analysis and extensive report writings to be read by the president and senior managers of the company.  He credits his first job to be the most beneficial in terms of learning about business writing, but includes that the classes he took were also very beneficial.  When asked if reading had an impact on his writing in the business world he stated, "I cannot imagine an individual can write well who does not read extensively across a broad spectrum of material from academic works to fiction."  When asked a time when his knowledge of business writing helped him the most he gave and instance in his career while he was being taken under consideration to be CEO of the company.  While under consideration he wrote out a business plan outlining his vision for the company for the board of directors.  His outline was read and shortly after he was given the title of CEO.  When asked what had changed the most about business writing since his career began was technology when his career began in 1969 a majority of his report writing was done on yellow legal pads while today it is nearly all on computers.  In his personal writing throughout his career he said that he has tried to make his writings more interesting for the reader.  That to try to incorporate story telling is important even in business writing.