It’s 4.55 pm. Almost time to wrap up for the day. Just one last task to tick off your list: reviewing a team member’s report before it goes to the Board tomorrow.
And, although you’re hoping (praying) for the best – deep down, you know what’s coming.
Then you open the document – and your worst fears are confirmed. This won’t be a light edit. Not even close. You’re staring down the barrel of a full-blown, line-by-line rewrite.
So you roll up your sleeves and get to work, again. And before you know it… another ‘quick tidy-up’ has turned into 90 minutes of rebuilding structure, tightening logic and rewriting whole sections just to make it presentable.
Not because you want to be your team’s unofficial ‘document rescuer’. But because handing it back to your staff member with feedback feels slower and riskier. After all, the Board’s deadline is not up for negotiation. And you’re not about to put your name (or your team’s name) to something that misses the mark.
If this picture feels painfully familiar, I see you. I hear you. In fact, I hear it from managers almost every day of the week. So trust me, you’re far from the only one stuck in this grind.
Let’s look at why it happens… and how to end the rewrite cycle. For good.
Why editing is an invisible drain on your role
If you’re like most managers I speak with, you’re not rewriting your team’s work because you’re a perfectionist. You’re rewriting it because the stakes are high – and sending up (or out) poorly written documents means delayed decisions and questions about your team’s competence. So, in that moment, rewriting feels safer than the fallout.
But stepping in comes with steep costs:
- It pulls you out of leadership mode: You sideline the work only you can do to fix work your team should already have covered.
- It eats up your time: A ‘quick review’ becomes an hour you don’t have spare.
- It overloads your brain: You’re fixing structure, logic and clarity on top of everything else on your plate.
- It erodes culture and trust: Rewrites breed frustration. You get resentful. They feel deflated. And the working relationship takes a hit.
- It creates team dependency: Every time you rescue a document, you create a pattern where they can simply submit sub-par work.
In short: you’re absorbing the consequences of a skill gap. A gap that burns you out, undermines your leadership and quietly shapes a culture where no one gets better.
But that doesn’t have to go on this way. So let’s look at the 8 things you can do to break that cycle once and for all!
1. A writing style guide (they’ll actually use)
A practical writing style guide removes guesswork. It tells your team exactly what ‘good writing’ means in your organisation.
When expectations are clear, people are far more likely to meet them – and stop defaulting to whatever outdated practices they might think are best.
For your writing guide to stick, it needs to be short, sharp and actionable. It should include:
- Preferred tone of voice for your brand
- Grammar, spelling, punctuation and formatting preferences
- Correct use of industry and brand-specific words or phrases (as well as ones to avoid)
- What ‘clear and concise’ actually looks like in your industry
- A handful of before-and-after examples from your team
Think of it as a reference point: the thing your team ALWAYS checks before sending a draft your way.
2. Grammarly Premium
Real-time feedback changes behaviour far faster than after-the-fact editing.
When you embed your writing style guide preferences into Grammarly Premium, your team gets instant nudges that prevent sloppy writing – before it hits your inbox. It can help with:
- Tone (too formal, too casual, too vague)
- Clarity (wordiness, long sentences, ambiguity)
- Readability (structure, transitions, flow)
- Consistency (terminology, formatting, voice)
Most importantly, the tool becomes your team’s silent co-coach. It handles the basic corrections so your higher-level feedback can focus on narrative and substance.
3. Document coversheets
Most writing goes wrong long before the first sentence is typed. People open a blank document with a vague idea and hope clarity will appear as they go. It rarely does.
That’s where coversheets – with their three ‘anchor points’ – come in. These anchors give your team a fixed set of coordinates, so the document doesn’t drift off course halfway through.
Before your team begins writing, ask them to spell out:
1. Audience: Who are we speaking to and what do they care about? This stops irrelevant details and ensures the message resonates with readers.
2. Purpose: Why does this document exist? This prevents waffle and forces the writer to get to the point quickly.
3. Outcome: What decision, action or response do we need? This keeps the document focused on moving something forward.
And coversheets don’t just help the writer – they help you too.
When you open a draft, you immediately understand the writer’s thinking and don’t edit a document with a different set of assumptions.
4. Quality, up-to-date templates
A huge percentage of rewrites happen because the structure misses the mark. Templates solve that instantly.
So invest time building (or updating) a suite of templates for your key pieces of repetitive communication such as letters, reports and emails. Each template should show:
- Structure and formatting expectations
- The correct order of information
- The purpose of each section
- Questions or prompts to guide the writer
- Approximate length or depth for each part
When the structure is right from the outset, logic strengthens, clarity improves, tone stays consistent – and your ‘this is all out of whack’ edits become a distant memory.
5. A library of ‘gold standard’ examples
People learn more from seeing quality writing than hearing instructions about great writing. A small library of your best examples gives your team a concrete reference point.
Just like templates, your library should include at least one example for each key communication piece, with a few short notes explaining:
- Why it works
- What makes it clear
- How the structure helps
- What intentional choices the writer made
This turns ‘write better’ from a vague request into something your team can actually model and draw direct inspiration from. The impact? Quality rises across the board. Fast.
6. AI guardrails and expectations
AI can speed up writing… but it can also turn poor inputs into worse outputs, while also exposing your business to new risks.
Without AI guardrails, your team is much more likely to paste a vague prompt into ChatGPT or Copilot, copy the output into a document and call it done. This leaves you to fix generic tone, flimsy logic and hollow sentences no human would ever write.
So put clear expectations in place about how AI should be used in your organisation. For example, you may want your team to use it only for:
- Ideas on structure: outlines, headings, flow
- Clarity checks: simplifying dense paragraphs, tightening long sentences
- Idea generation: options, angles, alternative phrasing
- Polishing: refining something they’ve already written
And make one boundary non-negotiable: Final drafts must reflect the writer’s own judgement, understanding and intent.
7. A clear review process
Most dependency comes from unclear standards.
When your team doesn’t know how many drafts you expect, which documents need your review or what ‘close enough’ means, they hand you everything and hope for the best.
So create clarity with:
- A simple review flow: self-check → peer check → manager review
- A practical checklist for all drafts
- A 20% rule: If you’d need to rewrite more than that, return it
- Clear criteria for when high-stakes work must go through you
- Expectations for turnaround time and revision cycles
When the process is predictable and the standard is explicit, people step up… and you stop being the default fixer.
8. Targeted business writing training
Templates, tools and processes all help. But if your team lacks core writing skills, the rewrites won’t stop.
Quality business writing training should include:
- How to tailor writing to different audiences
- How to write with clarity and purpose
- How to structure ideas logically
- How to cut clutter and get to the point
- How to use AI well – without losing meaning
- Practical examples pulled from your team’s real documents
Training turns slow, unclear writers into confident communicators. And suddenly, the documents you receive need only tweaks, not surgery.
Are constant rewrites chewing through your time and sanity? The good news is, with the right systems and skills in place, you can get out of editor mode – and back into leader mode. Let’s chat.