Imagine your team is ready to launch a major cross-departmental project. The project manager drafts an email to kick off the initiative, but the instructions are vague. Key roles are ambiguous, and timelines are squishy. No one’s quite sure what their individual responsibilities are. Team members reply with clarifying questions, and meetings multiply. If clarity isn’t provided immediately, deadlines will begin to slip, and frustration will grow.

And it all started with a bad email. On the surface, a confusing email or poorly structured report might seem like a small annoyance. But poor writing rarely stays contained. It spreads outward in ripples, affecting how teams collaborate, how leaders make decisions, and ultimately how the culture and bottom line of an organization thrive, or decline. The damage accumulates ripple by ripple, each effect feeding into the next.

Poor Writing as the First Drop

Poor writing is the first crack in the chain. It might begin with unclear instructions, jargon-filled documents, or reports written in the passive voice that leave key questions unanswered.

Common issues include writing that is too long, poorly organized, confusing, incomprehensible to the intended reader, and so on. More to the point, poor writing will simply fail to convey to readers the information they most need or want in a way they can find, understand, and act on.

Research shows the costs of these problems are significant.

In The Harvard Business Review, Josh Bernoff wrote that many professionals “spend about six percent of their time struggling with poorly written material” and called bad business writing “a hidden source of friction slowing your company down.”

And that consequent “friction” is just the start of a cascade of problems.

Ripple #1: The Need for Clarification and Rework

Once poor writing enters circulation, it demands attention. Team members must seek clarification or request revisions. Substandard writing requires multiple rounds of edits. Each round consumes valuable time, creating bottlenecks in workflow and drawing energy away from other priorities.

A single project update written unclearly can spark several unnecessary meetings. A sales proposal riddled with passive voice or jargon may bounce back and forth between departments as each team tries to decode what is meant. The cycle repeats, and efficiency falls apart.

Ripple #3: Time Delay and Wasted Effort

Clarification and rework translate directly into wasted time. Every unnecessary meeting or explanatory follow-up eats away at the calendar.

Bernoff’s now-classic research found that 81% of people who read heavily for work agree that poorly written material wastes a lot of their time, as much as 25.5 hours per week as readers must slow down, decode, and puzzle out meaning.

The cumulative effect can be staggering. Imagine if your organization reclaimed even just 2% of that lost time. For an enterprise with 1,000 employees, that would amount to over 500 hours each week redirected to more valuable tasks.

Ripple #4: Frustration, Mistrust, and Miscommunication

Time lost to poor writing does more than fill up schedules. It frustrates employees and erodes trust.

It can also make writers mistrust themselves. A survey respondent on workplace writing challenges said, “Many of my colleagues are so bad at writing that they avoid it completely.” That avoidance only compounds the problem, leaving more work on the shoulders of those who do write, while silencing the contributions of those who fear missteps.

Frustration grows as projects derail. When workers cannot rely on written communication for instruction or collaboration, they begin to mistrust not only the document but also the person behind it. Once mistrust sets in, collaboration becomes harder to sustain.

Ripple #5: Collaboration Breaks Down

When team members interpret the same instructions differently, work splinters. Instead of combining forces, departments operate in silos. Duplicated effort becomes common. Handoffs fail. People become less likely to ask clarifying questions, convinced that confusion is simply part of the process.

Collaboration at its best is a multiplier. Poor writing turns it into a divider.

Ripple #6: Decision-Making Problems

Leadership decisions rely on timely, accurate information built on the cooperative, collaborative efforts of their teams. When that breaks down, flawed or incomplete writing will lead to flawed decisions.

It’s not just internal decisions, either. These issues can affect customer, stakeholder, and public decision-making too. Consider: The University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute captured this dynamic in a study of the economics of hosting the 2024 Olympics in Boston. The report’s authors wrote mostly in passive voice, which obscured answers to important questions like who would be responsible for major costs. The uncertainties contributed to Boston rejecting the Olympic bid.

Now imagine the same dynamic inside your company. A proposal to a prospective client falls flat because passive voice leaves too many questions. Meanwhile, your competitor submits a crystal-clear, confidence-inspiring document. The differentiator here is not just price or product. It’s the quality of the writing and the teamwork that went into it.

Ripple #7: Lower Productivity and Efficiency Loss

This is the point where the ripple effect really hits the bottom line.

Nearly half (41%) of employees say poor communication decreases productivity, and 51% said it raises their stress levels.

Another workplace survey found that 38% of workers say they need to write faster, yet inadequate skills slow them down. Every slow email or poorly organized report represents not just one individual’s inefficiency but also a collective drag on a team.

Taken altogether, the math is sobering. Grammarly’s State of Business Communication report estimates that businesses lose $12,506 per worker per year (or 7.47 hours per worker per week) just due to poor communication. Even worse, for higher earners, the costs can double.

Ripple #8: Missed Potential & Invisible Effects

Some effects of poor writing are invisible. You might never see the sale that was lost due to a confusing or unpersuasive proposal, report, or piece of marketing collateral. You never notice the innovation that never emerged because an employee hesitated to share an idea in writing. You never know what could have been achieved in an hour consumed by writing inefficiency or in place of the misunderstanding caused by unclear documents. In short, high-quality, high-performing writing could be pushing your organization to new heights, and you don’t even realize it.

This missed potential is the most insidious cost. Organizations that have never invested in improving writing often have no benchmark for what is possible. They assume the current level of inefficiency is normal. What they do not realize is that good writing could have multiplied their outcomes.

Breaking the Cascade

The ripple effects of poor writing are clear, but they are not inevitable. Leaders can interrupt the cycle.

• Invest in writing training: Equip your team with the skills to write clearly, concisely, and confidently. Writing training works and offers a ton of organizational benefits.

• Encourage clarity and consistency: Use writing rubrics and style guides for emails, project briefs, and reports.

• Promote feedback loops: Normalize asking “Did this make sense?” and reward clarity. A strong revision process is key to great writing.

• Develop a formal writing process. Adopting a consistent, repeatable writing process (something like the Hurley PROS™ Writing Framework) can drive organization-wide writing improvements.

• Get a professional communication audit. This is the best way to identify, diagnose, and treat the specific writing ailments affecting your team and organization.

All That, Just From Poor Writing

Poor writing is not just an inconvenience or necessary evil. It’s always the first spark behind a larger chain reaction that explodes into wasted time, frustrated teams, clouded decision-making, and eroded culture. The hidden costs pile up in lost productivity, disengaged employees, and opportunities that never even surface. The difference between success and stagnation often comes down to something deceptively simple: how well your team writes.

To break the cycle of writing and communication challenges spiraling out of control at your organization and to get help addressing related problems unique to your situation and needs,  contact Hurley Write for a custom, no-obligation consultation.