Using “I”, “we” or posted on 11 August 2024

The first one-pager I wrote for a VP escalation was fully rewritten by my manager at that time. They had left everything as suggestions with a lot of comments for me to learn – this was one of the most important lessons during my career.

One of the feedback was to pay attention to when I would use I, we or . In general the rule of thumb I ended up with is:

  • Use “we” as the company, don’t use “we” to position your team vs another one. VP wants to see a fair description of the problem and that the authors of the document/escalation understand what’s best for the company.
  • Use including yours only you talk about specific team impact, as “in proposal 1 would result in to manage a new service”.
  • Use “I” in your perf assessment. What matters is what you did, not what you achieved with some peers/team – otherwise the first naive question that will come up is how much work did you do. In general there shouldn’t be references to “I” in design docs/one-pager

What writing/communication tips did you learn through your career?

LinkedIn post