The Power of Effective Writing in the Life Sciences Industry with Pam Hurley, Founder of Hurley Write

In this episode we welcome Pam Hurley, the founder and president of Hurley Write Inc., who specializes in professional writing and communication training. Pam discusses how proper writing can lead to more effective professional communication in life sciences, and how precision and confidence in writing can help professionals achieve their goals. 

She highlights the importance of clear and concise communication, especially in regulatory submissions, research publications, or internal communications. Delving into the common writing challenges, Pam mentions the lack of understanding of the outcome and disregarding reader's readability and understanding as some. She concludes by highlighting the crucial role of effective writing in business and organizational decision-making and shares tips for enhancing writing skills.

LinkedIn.com/in/Hurleywrite

https://www.hurleywrite.com/ 

00:40 Meet the Guest: Pam Hurley
02:14 Pam's Journey into Professional Writing
04:06 The Impact of Effective Writing in Life Sciences
08:15 Common Writing Challenges in Professional Settings
16:16 The Role of Writing in Decision Making
17:50 The Future of Writing: AI and Beyond
19:12 Pam's Favorite Writers and Reading Habits
21:42 Closing Remarks and Contact Information

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Music by keldez

Transcript

0:01

Hi there! Welcome to the From Lab to Launch podcast by Qualio, where we share inspiring stories from the people on the front lines of life sciences. Tune in and leave inspired to bring your life saving products to the world.

Meg Sinclair: 0:17

Hi, everyone. And thanks for tuning in to From Lab to Launch by Qualio. I'm Meg, your host. I'm glad to be here and really excited about today's episode. Before we get started, we'd love it if you rated the podcast. It's easy to do and share it with any of your science nerd friends. We know you have some. If you'd like to be on the show, please see the show notes for an application. Today we're joined by Pam Hurley, a distinguished figure in the world of professional writing and communication training. Pam is the founder and president of Hurley Write Inc., a firm that has carved out a niche for itself by providing top tier writing courses tailored to the needs of businesses, technical, and scientific professionals. With a client roster that reads like a who's who of global corporations, including life science giants like Pfizer and Genentech, Pam brings a wealth of experience in enhancing the clarity, impact, and effectiveness of professional communication. Her work is about empowering professionals to convey their ideas effectively, engage their audiences, and achieve their goals with precision and confidence. For anyone in the life sciences looking to elevate their writing, whether it's for regulatory submissions, research publications, or internal communications, Pam's, Pam's insights are invaluable. Her approach, focusing on clear, concise, and targeted documents and presentations, promises to leave you with strategies that will immediately improve your writing and communication skills. Given how much writing and documentation takes place in launching any regulated product, we thought Pam would be a wonderful addition to the podcast this

Pam Hurley: 1:56

year. I'd refer you to Salesforce, Meg. Oh, great. That's it. That's it, everybody. We're done.

Meg Sinclair: 2:03

That's it. We're done. So for more of Pam's work, check out the show notes, but let's go ahead and get to it, Pam. Welcome to the show.

Pam Hurley: 2:11

Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here. Terrific. Can you give us some

Meg Sinclair: 2:14

background on how you got into your writing career and running your own

Pam Hurley: 2:18

practice? Yeah, absolutely. So, um, I started in academia. Um, back in the day, and actually, it was interesting because, um, I was teaching in academia and I realized that what I was teaching in academia was applicable to a lot of professionals. So, I don't know if you ever listen to me on LinkedIn, I have this series called Pam's rants, and I'm consistently ranting about the poor, the poor job that academia doesn't train people how to write for the real world. And so I called a local is actually a pharma company. They're still in business. I called them and I said, hey. Um, I'm teaching this class. I think your folks could benefit from it. I called him for a solid year. They finally hired me. And, um, when they hired hired me, they hired I worked for them for about 10 years training their existing folks and also training their, their, uh, you know, onboarding their new folks to teach them the, the way that the company wanted them to write. So that kind of propelled us, uh, to the, uh, to stardom, if you want to think about it that way.

Meg Sinclair: 3:35

Awesome. So just cold calling got your foot in the door. Yeah, I

Pam Hurley: 3:40

mean, back in the day, you could, you know, you could get people on the phone. I don't think it's that way anymore. But back in the day, you sure could. And so yeah, and then, and then from there, I just kept calling companies. And, you know, now we have a team of probably seven, we have a team of seven, um, you know, very talented, uh, very talented instructor, instructor. So yeah, it's been great.

Meg Sinclair: 4:05

Terrific. So how can effective writing transform the life science industry?

Pam Hurley: 4:11

Oh, let me count the ways. Um, so one of the things we find with life sciences companies Uh, is that they're oftentimes they have incredibly smart people, they always have incredibly smart people, but these folks don't necessarily know how to write and how to write well, and how to write in such a way that the information appeals to and can be read and understood by their targeted readers. And so, especially if they come from academic backgrounds, they oftentimes tend to write in academic speak, which is not the way that they, um, that they should be writing. And as you know, in life sciences, they're so documentation heavy. I mean, everything from, uh, you know, taking notes at meetings to protocols to FDA submission, the list goes on and on and on, uh, deviation. We do a lot of work with, with, uh, companies on their deviation reports. Um, and it's just, you know, there's a, a lot of time and energy wasted on poor writing and and so, you know, what we find oftentimes is that people. In the, in, in the life sciences, right? And then there's, there's, there's a lot of revision and things like that. And there's a lot of feedback and there's a lot of back and forth. And so it takes longer for, you know, products to get out the door, takes longer for things to be approved and massive amounts of money. Right. So I'm not telling any of the life sciences folks anything that they don't, don't already know. That's a lot. It's a lot of time, a lot of wasted time and energy on poor writing that can really be easily solved. Do you have an,

Meg Sinclair: 6:02

excuse me, do you have a specific example of how improving those writing skills has. impacted a deviation process at a

Pam Hurley: 6:09

company? Yeah, so we're working with a company right now and their deviation reports are written in such a way that it's very difficult for management to understand what they're supposed to do and how they're supposed to fix the issue. And so what we help them work on is getting to the point more quickly, because oftentimes with deviation report, you know, they're in chronologically 1st, this happened and there's all this stuff happens. And then by the end, they're like, oh, and so what we think what we're teaching them to do is to rethink. How they, how they strategize and how they organize these kinds of reports for their particular readers, because management, you know, what are they, what are they mainly interested in? Right? And so teaching people, writers in the life sciences to really, and we hear this all the time, you've got to focus on, you know, who are you writing for, who are your readers? But the problem with that is that most of the time people don't know how to do that. So they'll say, Oh, I'm writing for Meg. Okay. Well, okay. You know, and then you have, well, Meg likes bulleted Meg, Meg, Meg likes bullets and all her documents. Okay, and so then, you know what I mean? So it's just this kind of superficial kind of thinking about who they're writing for, and everything that we teach is based on readability studies. So it's not grammar, or we're going to do this because we think it sounds okay, we're going to do this because this is what we know about how readers read. And so a lot of it is, these folks just don't have the tools, and I'm deviating from what your question was. But but a lot of times it's it's not that they are poor for communicators is that they don't have the tool they don't. So we just kind of do this because this is what we think we should do. And this is the way we're taught in academia. Instead of there are real ways to solve the writing problem. So it sounds

Meg Sinclair: 8:07

like knowing your audience and that readability and understanding that readability are two common challenges. Are there other common writing challenges that professionals face in their day to day

Pam Hurley: 8:19

work? Yes, a big one is not knowing what the outcome is. Right, and so what I mean by that is don't write without understanding, you have to know where you're going to get there. And so 1 of the things we talk about in our classes is reverse engineering, right? So if you start with where you're going, then you can better chart that path. But what people do is they just start writing and writing and writing and write some more and then I'm going to, you know, I'm going to hope for the best or they use someone else's report or something like that without giving any real thought to what is it that I'm trying to achieve. And so that oftentimes is why it takes. You know, when you're reading, it takes so long to figure out what the point is, because people just write, and they just write, and they write, and they just, gosh, I really hope it works this time, without having any real, um, you know, we talk a lot about outcome statement, reverse engineering the document, know where you're going, and then you can, you can chart the path to get there. But if you don't know where you're going, or you have a vague idea of where you're going, it's going to be much more difficult for you.

Meg Sinclair: 9:29

That's great advice, and I pet peeve reading something and being like, what

Pam Hurley: 9:34

was the point? And you're reading it and it's like, okay, and any minute now, I'm going to be able to figure it out. It's just kind of amazing. You know, it's interesting because writers don't Most of the folks we work with hate writing. They just don't like it. I don't want to do it, but it's so interesting because they spend all this time doing what we call overriding. Right and it's just this kind of going to throw words on a page and hope for the best and then they spend all this time on the back and where if they, if they took a minute to take a minute to plan. They wouldn't, you know, they, they could, they could, they're writing tasks would be so much shorter and they would write more cogent documents. Right out of the chute instead of this kind of, you know, another thing about it is, is, you know, the writing, the reports, whatever the, whatever it is they're running. That's, that's the deliverable, right? That is the deliverable. It's not what you do in the lab or what you do behind the scenes. It is the document, because that's how people decide, you know, is the FDA going to approve it? Approve, you know, what is the deviation? Can it be fixed? How do we fix it? You know, whatever it is, but people, you know, companies are guilty of not giving writers adequate training or adequate time to write, which is very interesting because the document is the deliverable. I mean, so there's that. It's a great point. Thanks. Yeah. Um,

Meg Sinclair: 11:16

all the time spent and not planned out well.

Pam Hurley: 11:20

Yes. It's amazing. And companies oftentimes don't see that ROI, you know, they just know that, um, think, think, you know, things aren't going well, but they don't know why and they don't know how to fix it. And they don't ever look to the writers and lots of times hate to say this out loud, but a lot of times it's the reviewers as well, who are who are the bottleneck and they're making comments that nobody understands and it's just, it's just kind of this. We're kind of situation instead of everybody, everybody being aligned and everybody have to have a have the same understanding or this is what we're looking for. This is what we're going to review for. Right. Instead, it's a surprise. Oh, today, or, you know, it's kind of weird. It's a power thing to, I mean, it's, let's be honest, unfortunately, going

Meg Sinclair: 12:19

back to the readability studies. Can you elaborate more on the concept of those studies and how it forms the foundation of your teaching methodology?

Pam Hurley: 12:27

Yeah, absolutely. As I said, we don't teach grammar. So what we, what we do is we, we look at and so what readability studies are obviously are how readers read, because if you don't have our readers read, what is the point? You're guessing, right? So I'm going to write for the engineer or the scientist in the next cube instead of understanding how readers read. So readers pay attention to sentences in a certain way to paragraphs that are written written in a certain way. There's strategies involved in length, the length of a paragraph, the length of a sentence. You know, people say, Oh, yeah, I'm actually actually have one one client. We've been doing this for 35 years. So I've pretty much seen it all. And the client was well, if a sentence is over three lines. It's too long. Well, that's dumb. It's just stupid because you can have a sentence that's five or five lines long and be perfectly readable. And you can have one that's one line long and not be readable, but we get the, you know, people get caught up in these rules overruling. You cannot, you cannot be given a sentence with and or but, or the world is just going to explode. I mean, it's crazy stuff. So everything that we, everything that we talk about is. You know, a lot of writing really is common sense, you know, but people get really wrapped up in the rules and the rules. So, so how you emphasize, how you write for particular readers, what type of organizational strategy you use, all that is based on readability. One of the things we know now is that people don't read. And so if people don't read, how do you appeal to those to those readers, or they may gloss over or they may skim, right? People are much more likely to skim now than they were 5 or 10 years ago. You need to know that you need to know that if you're running the same way you did 5 or 10 years ago, that document may not be landing the way that it did 5 or 10 years ago. So what do you need to do? Right? And so that's how readability studies can help us. Evolve and think about different and new ways and different strategies to appeal to our readers and get and, and get the job done. Can you tell, I'm passionate about this? Can you tell I

Meg Sinclair: 14:47

I love it. I love the passion. Um, many of our professionals see writing as a secondary skill. We see it on job applications, you know, have excellent written communication. But how do you help them understand the critical role it plays in their

Pam Hurley: 15:01

success? Oh, my goodness. Well, here's the thing, and this has been said by philosophers for years and years and years. If you can't explain it, you probably don't understand it. We also know that, and this is based on studies, that people who can communicate well are more likely to be promoted. They're more likely to be in leadership roles and things like that. People who can't communicate. Well, I mean, another thing to think about is this is that people judge you based on the writing you do. And all of us have done it. All of us have looked at the document and read it. Not the sharpest tool in the shed. We've all done it. Right. And so when we think about the document as the deliverable, that's what I'm talking about. Your image, right? The way that you are perceived is wrapped up in that document. And so it's incredible. How do you want to be perceived? Do you want to be perceived as somebody who doesn't know anything, disorganized because the writing is disorganized? Or do you want to, excuse me, or do you want to be perceived as somebody who is incredibly intelligent and thoughtful and all those kinds of fun things? I'm slipping out of my chair. So excited. So excited. Falling out of your chair. Sitting on my chair. Yeah. And

Meg Sinclair: 16:16

what are some insights you have on how effective writing impacts decision making in business and organizational settings?

Pam Hurley: 16:22

Oh, I will give you a story. So we have one, one client who, um, they're, these are engineers and the writing was so poor, so hard to understand that leadership was making wrong decisions. So. multi million dollar incorrect decisions based on the information that they were, that they were given, right? And then another example is the Challenger disaster. If you've read anything about the Challenger disaster, that was a communication issue. And so, you know, when you think about those things, and maybe in your business, Right. Your business is not that big, not, not that big of a deal. It won't have that much of an impact, but it could. And so, I mean, businesses really need to consider how their communication is being perceived. And I will, and I'm going to say this, a lot of new graduates. don't have the same writing training that we did. I mean, I'm old back in the day we had, you know, we had a lot, we had a lot, a lot more writing training. And so there's an assumption, oftentimes that people who are college graduates, masters, PhDs know how to write. And that's, that can be a really poor assumption to make.

Meg Sinclair: 17:50

Yeah. And on the flip side, if they don't know how to write, how are they leveraging AI and, and as those tools become more prevalent, is writing training still essential?

Pam Hurley: 18:01

Absolutely, because you still have to, you still have to have, AI has not gotten to the point where it can, it can take the place of human beings and human thought and that kind of thing. It's interesting because we've actually just developed a class on AI, and there's, there's three levels on how you want to use AI, because it's only as good as what you put in, right? So, it is making progress. I think it can be a good aid, but you have to know how to use it. Um, but I don't know that it will ever replace human thought, human problem solving capabilities and those kinds of things. And then the other thing is, you still have to have people who can review the AI written document for technical content and readability and those kinds of things. So, you know, it just, and I know people, oh AI, I know it's a nice new shiny thing and I'm never going to have to write again. Yeah, we're not there yet. Yeah, not till

Meg Sinclair: 18:59

Pam teaches the

Pam Hurley: 19:00

AI tricks. Yeah, not till I get in there and teach it. Yes.

Meg Sinclair: 19:06

Yeah. Well, our last question is more of a fun one. We'd like to ask each of our guests. And since we've talked a lot about writing, it seems apropos that we would ask you about your favorite writers. So if we ran into you at a bookstore or your local library, which section

Pam Hurley: 19:22

would we find you? You'd find me in fiction. I love fiction. Uh, I love, uh, John Irving, who wrote the world according to God. Something very interesting about him too, is. So, so they say whether this is true or not, but he starts his novels with by writing the last sentence first, and then he works his way backwards. So, I was talking about the reverse engineering, but I love John Irving. I love Joyce Carol Oates. John Boyne's another one. I mean, I love to read. I read, I read every day. And that's another thing that research tells us. If you read every day, you're going to be a better writer, and you should write every day. That'll make you a better writer. Big surprise here. Does, does documentation count? Say it

Meg Sinclair: 20:10

again. Does documentation count as writing? Yeah. That I think I'm all set.

Pam Hurley: 20:16

Yeah. It's not like you're doing it consistently. I mean, it's just, you know, the, um, example I always use is. You know, you don't get great at anything without doing it consistently. You just don't. And so I know people hate writing and all that, but there's so many ways to, you know, to, to write right, whether it's. You know, emails or, or journaling or whatever the heck it is. I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot of ways to write that nobody's going to. I think part of the problem too, is that, you know, when you're six and you write, Oh, it's just so great. It's on the refrigerator and all that. And then as you, as you grow, you just get, you just get beat up about your writing so much. That by the time people actually get into the real world, I mean, they're just like, I hate it. I can't do it because there's a lot of angst associated with it. And that's a whole nother rant of mine. But anyway, I just feel like, and I'm not saying that all, you know, the teachers, but they always focus on the, on the bad stuff and they never focus on what writers do. Well, typically, yeah. Yeah, so that's a problem. And in the workplace, if you manage a team of people who have to write, you should focus on some of the things that they do well, you know, instead of just beating them up about everything. That's great advice. Thanks.

Meg Sinclair: 21:42

Well, thanks, Pam. This has been a great conversation. Where can people go to follow along and learn more about you?

Pam Hurley: 21:47

Thank you. You can go to our website, which is Hurley, write w. R. I. T. E. dot com. Uh, you can hit me up on LinkedIn, uh, Pam Hurley, um, or email me, Pam Hurley Write or give us a call. 8 7 7 2 4 9 7 4 8 3. Yeah, thank you. And check out Pam's rants on LinkedIn. Pam's rants. Yeah. Okay. I need to do another one. I've gotten a little slack here lately, but yeah, check out my rants.

Meg Sinclair: 22:14

Okay, I will do that. Thanks so much for joining us today.

22:19

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of From Lab to Launch, brought to you by Qualio. If you like what you've heard, please subscribe and give the show a positive review. It really helps us out. For more information about Qualio, our guest today, or to be a guest on a future episode, please refer to the show notes. Until next time.