By Dana P Skopal, PhD
As a business writer, you need to get your message across without drowning in unnecessary words. This often means that you need to unjumble information, be concise, and order it coherently for the reader.
Ordering or organising your information entails several steps as well as thinking about the questions a reader may ask. The reader wants to know what this document is about, why it is important, and what do they need to do with the information. Make sure the reader can find these answers easily – don’t bury them in the detail.
One way to organise these main ideas is to do a mind map or brainstorm with a colleague. After this session, aim to write the key points down on one A4 page. Next, note what are the key points and where/what is your recommendation/advice.
Regarding the order of information, organisations seem to be moving away from an order of: 1) background; 2) details; 3) findings; 4) recommendation. Most managers want to read the recommendation, so we now see: 1) recommendation, 2) key details, and 3) rationale for decision (with other information being placed in appendices or on an intranet).
The order of ‘background to recommendation’ invariably comes from the academic order of introduction, body and conclusion. This order links to the persuasive adage of: tell them what you are going to talk about, cover the details of your topic, and finally tell them again what you have just told them. Now that we work in a world of information overload, this information order rarely works.
As a manager wants to know what next steps you are recommending, how do you summarise your key information into one or two pages? Imagine that you only have two minutes to get your message across and record yourself on your mobile phone. If you know your content, you can put an effective argument together when you are not bogged down looking at the words on a computer screen. Effective business writing involves planning and thinking – give recording a ‘summary’ a go. I use this option in many workshops and am amazed at the results.
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