Good business

Believe Buffett

In 2008, the renowned American investor Warren Buffett overtook Bill Gates to become the world's richest man. Clarity rejoiced at his success, as Buffett believes that good writing and good business go together. His website and his company reports are written in clear English and tell the world of his successes, and his occasional failures, in language everyone can understand.

What about British companies? In 2003, we examined the annual reports, websites and other literature put out by the top FSTE 100 companies to see how well they communicated with the public. In our view, if a company cannot make you understand its business, there is a good chance that it is doing something wrong. If it presents its business clearly and well, there is a good chance that it knows what it is doing.

We waded through acres of waffle, jargon and obfuscation to find companies we thought wrote well. We came up with ten companies that considered their readers, took care with their writing, laid things out well and made informative points simply and clearly. We called them the Clarity Index and tracked their performance against the FTSE 100 index.

Happily, we were vindicated. The Clarity Index outperformed the FTSE 100. Good writing and good business did indeed go together, as you can see from the graph below:

Clarity Index - Sept 2003 to July 2004

For more tips on writing, have a look at the Clarity blog.