The other day, I asked ChatGPT what it thought about this issue:
“Now that so many people in the workplace are using ChatGPT, what’s the future of business correspondence? What can people do to make an impression?”
After noting that due to widespread ChatGPT use among business employees, emails, proposals and reports are “starting to sound the same: competent, but robotic and forgettable,” ChatGPT offered tips for standing out from the crowd.
“Show personality without losing professionalism,” it exhorted, as “a touch of wit, warmth, or informal phrasing makes you memorable.”
This exchange with ChatGPT prompted me to think of two pieces of business writing that can meet these criteria: the note written by the hedge fund investor Michael Burry in the film “The Big Short” informing clients that he was closing his wildly successful fund (he had correctly predicted the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis and made a bundle for them), and the farewell letter I wrote to my colleagues at the Wall Street Journal on my last day (I was a reporter in China around the 2010s). I’m sure there are many more examples of warm and witty business emails out there, but these two are the ones that immediately came to mind, and I reproduce them below for your reference.
Michael Burry’s letter to his clients
I met my wife on Match.com. My profile said: “I’m a medical student with only one eye, an awkward social manner, and $145,000 in student loans.” She wrote back, “You’re just what I’ve been looking for.” She meant honest. So let me be honest. Making money is not like I thought it would be. This business kills the part of life that is essential. The part that has nothing to do with business. For the past two years, my insides have felt like they’re eating themselves. All the people I respected won’t talk to me anymore except through lawyers. People want an authority to tell them how to value things, but they choose this authority not based on facts or results. They choose it because it seems authoritative and familiar. And I am not and never have been… “familiar.” So, I’ve come to the sullen realization that I must close down the fund.
My farewell letter to my soon-to-be former colleagues at the Wall Street Journal
It is with mixed emotions that I’m writing this farewell note. On one hand, I feel bad (guilty) for leaving a company that has taught me so much and invested so much in me; on the other hand, I’m happy and excited that a new chapter of my life is about to begin.
And yet, the one emotion I’m feeling above all today is sadness. My mind keeps returning to something I once read about the Swedish actress Anita Ekberg. Her last scene in “La Dolce Vita” took place in a car, filmed in a studio. When the filming was over as far as she was concerned, she collapsed in tears, held onto the steering wheel and refused to leave. Eventually, she had to be carried away by gentle force.
Even though I’m leaving of my own volition and won’t by any means need to be carried away from the office at the end of today (!), I already know I’ll forever miss the role of a reporter. Further into the future, when I’m jaded and weary of the world, I’ll probably see my Dow Jones days as the period of my life that best encapsulates what it’s like to be young. For this reason, I’ll be keeping some of the stories and columns I wrote – stuff that normally don’t have a shelf life of more than 24 hours – safely tucked away somewhere, because one day, they’ll become precious mementos of my youth. As I read and re-read them, I’ll remember the helping hand and encouraging word from many of you, the numerous phone calls and the many meals it took to land on this and that piece of information, the intense physical demands of spotting and then running after government officials from one end of a room to another.
Thank you all for making my time at Dow Jones such a fabulous experience.
Michelle Ng
英國牛津大學畢業，前《蘋果日報》和《眾新聞》專欄作家，現在身在楓葉國，心繫中國大陸和香港。
聯絡方式： michelleng.coach@proton.me
個人網站： https://michellengwritings.com
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