Writing That Works, 3e_ How to Communicate Effectively in Business - Kenneth Roman [36]
Reports, like Caesar’s, describe the outcome of an operation. What’s happened so far. A plan states what we want to happen. Both are essential to moving forward.
Making things happen depends on clear communication. The consequences of faulty organization and careless writing are severe. Unpersuasive plans go straight to the files, unacted on. Sloppy reports land in wastebaskets, unread. Problems go unrecognized or unsolved. Opportunities are missed. Things that should happen don’t.
How to Write a Plan
Whether you are writing a battle plan or a business plan, your objective is the same: action.
“For Montgomery,” wrote a biographer of the British World War II field marshal, “it was all a question of having a plan. Once you had decided what you wanted — what, in military terms, was your aim — you made a plan, which you then implemented carefully by stages, maintaining the aim and concentrating all your resources to achieving it.”
A plan starts with a clear statement of purpose. The capital campaign for the New York Botanical Garden started:
This plan lays the groundwork for the Garden’s renaissance. It sets forth the Garden’s future directions and identifies the resources required to achieve financial stability and move forward with vitality.
The plan then outlined the purposes of each of five proposed programs within that plan:
New vigor and focus for botanical science — a new plant studies center, endowing science, staffing the Institutes of Systematic and Economic Botany, strengthening the library, improving Herbarium access, expanding research in the forest, renovating laboratories, disseminating scientific information.
An American horticultural showcase — the great conservatory, building horticultural endowments, the propagation range, funding critical staff positions, expanding stewardship of the forest, completing the demonstration gardens complex, completing a plant inventory and computerizing horticulture, improving turfgrass, rebuilding the Montgomery Conifer Collection.
Environmental education — The Children’s Adventure Garden, environmental education in the forest, hiring a graduate studies coordinator, strengthening continuing education.
The visitor’s experience — providing additional parking, renovating the lecture hall, creating new public programming, creating a new visitor center, new signage program, undertaking audience research.
Financial stability — supporting the growth of the annual fund, building endowment, developing earned income, conducting a capital campaign.
The seven-year $165 million campaign went over its target and achieved almost all its goals.
You’re writing for someone who will either approve your plan, send it back for more work, or reject it. Anything that confuses that decision or throws the reader off the track makes approval less likely. Cut out all irrelevancies. If you feel you have to touch on secondary or side issues, label them as such. Everything in your plan should pertain to your stated goal.
1. Build a foundation of facts
Your choice of facts should be rigorously selective. Stick to facts that relate to issues under consideration. Changes in the market. Competitive moves. New products, services or technologies. Financial issues — revenues, profit margins, return on investment. Economic or political conditions. Many plans will call for a combination of such data — and lots more besides.
Then draw conclusions from the facts. You can almost always infer one or more principles — lessons learned, either from the situation at hand or from others with analogous facts. Look for emerging patterns that could guide decisions. Finally, show how your facts bear on the action you’re proposing.
Never present facts on their own, like unstrung gems. If your facts don’t link together you leave your reader with information that, like a Mexican pyramid, doesn’t come to a point.
2. State your recommendations clearly
What steps do you propose