Plymouth instructor still works to help writers 'get things done'

Stan Berry's four decades of teaching corporate writing is coming full circle.

Berry, president of Berry Writing Group in Plymouth, got his start teaching in-person "Writing to Get Things Done" seminars to corporate groups in the Twin Cities. His work expanded nationally to businesses, government agencies and military bases.

He subsequently added other platforms, releasing his course on videocassettes in the 1980s and online in the 2000s. He built the online version in 2020 to combine live Zoom instruction and self-paced online training.

This month, Berry will be back in front of students in person by teaching writing and speaking to leadership classes at the U.S. Navy base in San Diego.

Through the years and across all those miles, Berry has taught more than 100,000 students, between in-person, video and online courses.

His message has been consistent, and passionately delivered: Everything written in corporate America and government — emails, memos, letters, technical reports — can be rewritten in three paragraphs that clearly and concisely state what you want to get done, your reason and your deadline.

Berry's first fix for poor writing turns the English 101 model upside down. "Academic writing does not work well in business," Berry said. "Introduction-body-conclusion is the kiss of death."

His other solution: Figure out what you want to get done before you begin writing. Otherwise, the result can be rambling prose. "No matter who the person is, when they write that way, they create an unreadable document," he said.

The rise of texting and social media has had mixed results on writing, Berry said. It gets people to write and, with limited space, writers have to — or should — get to the point.

The downside, however, is that writers often don't because they're still writing as though they're at work. Like other unfocused writing, FYI texts, posts and emails leave busy readers wondering what the writer wanted or needed and when.

Berry's hybrid course involves six to eight hours of self-paced, on-demand learning for groups of 25 over three to five days. Berry leads a Zoom kickoff session, a 90-minute midcourse check-in and a post-course follow-up.

The hybrid class is cost-effective, Berry said, and, of course, it enables students to learn from anywhere. One client scheduled 50 employees from 13 offices. Berry said it improves on live classroom training, with additional learning activities and multiple sets of instructions to help students revise preseminar writing samples.

"People have said this is more than a writing class. This is more than a speaking class," Berry said. "This is about how to be in the world with people. This is about how to work in spirit of cooperation. This is about learning to love my colleagues, to care about people."

"It's my ministry," said Berry, who has a master's degree in art and religion from Yale, choosing divinity school over the Vietnam War.

Communicating was a challenge for much of Berry's early life. He was critically injured when an ice truck ran him over when he was just 18 months old. He stuttered as a child and stopped speaking in class in seventh grade.

It wasn't until he was at the University of Minnesota, at age 20, that he got comfortable speaking in class.

Berry worked with his father, an English teacher who also taught at writing camps. He began honing his "Writing to Get Things Done" coursework and trademarked the phrase.

"My dad's the coolest guy I ever met," he said. "Sometimes when I teach, a lot of times, almost every time, I just feel my dad's presence in the room. I think, thanks for coming, Dad."

Todd Nelson is a freelance writer in Lake Elmo. His e-mail is todd_nelson@mac.com.