Capture. Deliver. Excel. | Focus, the first principle

Focus the first principle

Focus, the foundation of a good text, guides you through the planning and execution phases of your writing. Focus comes from using a brief and outline to determine what and how you are going to write.

Remember the tortuous presentation that left the audience in a deep coma? And the article that failed to move you in the first three paragraphs? Or the 120-page business plan that never led to funding? These products of wasted human toil (and organisational resources) probably lacked one of the crucial ingredients of good business writing: focus.

Focus involves adjusting the scope and scale of your writing in such a way that you are able to influence the attitude and behaviour of your readers.

Scope refers to the breadth and depth of a story. Breadth means whether you restrict yourself to the subject matter, or include related issues. Depth refers to the level of detail you chose when developing a story.

Scale simply means the length of a story. A news flash on the intranet or an e-mail to a colleague are examples of small-scale writing. Annual reports or business plans are examples of large-scale writing. The larger the scale, the more important it is to plan your writing.

Attitude refers to your readers’ emotional state and intellectual position. The emotional state can involve your readers’ values, beliefs, feelings, ambitions, concerns etc. An intellectual position involves comprehension and reasoning, for example when discussing the merits of a new strategy or business case. In short, attitude involves the heart and mind of your reader, both of which need to be captured before your writing can be truly effective.

Behaviour relates to action - or lack of it – on the part of the reader. If a story fails to justify a change programme, a reader may become fearful and obstruct the process. Or, announcing that an organisation supports an environmental non-governmental organisation may prompt consumers to purchase more of the company’s products.

How do you achieve focus?

When starting work on a writing assignment it is wise to write yourself a brief. Imagine that you are briefing an external agency who will do the writing for you and think of all the relevant information it needs to produce the outcome you desire. This probably means you will want to ask questions about the context, content, stakeholders and goals of the writing, such as:

What is the external and internal business context, both strategic and operational?
What is the main issue and what are the other related issues?
Why is this issue important to each of the stakeholders for whom you are writing?
Which stakeholders are you targeting and what are their values, beliefs, interests, needs, and ambitions?
What are the attitudes and behaviours of your stakeholders regarding the subject and how do you wish to change each of them?
What content and approach is needed to achieve this result?
What is the occasion for which you are writing and how does this affect the scope and scale of your story?

Keep your answers short in order to get to the essence of what, how and why you wish to write. The goal is not to be eloquent but to focus your resources on the issues that really matter. It is also important that you take time to reflect on the brief and, when appropriate, consult others in the organisation. This could result in a healthy dialogue that allows participants to externalise their thoughts, assumptions, and interests. If you are able to assimilate these perspectives into a better whole, the end result will enjoy broad support. You can read more about this approach in the final chapter of this book, which suggests ways to manage the writing process.

Examples of briefs

Consider the following brief for an article that needs to be written for the in-house magazine of a publicly traded company. The article describes the approach to and result of a recent restructuring at a business unit and aims to show staff that the unit is now performing better.

Background

Two years ago, most analysts downgraded our stock because of concerns over cost and the product pipeline in the Widgets business unit. The Board and Widget leaders were given six months to prepare a restructuring plan; trade unions were involved from day one. A plan was signed off after seven months, its implementation took another 14; the annual results published in the meantime did not affect the chosen direction. The plan called for laying off 1,200 staff (57% through forced redundancies), heavier investments in R&D and a new HR strategy aimed at creating a culture of high performance. Currently, Widgets is producing on target with a more acceptable cost structure.

Goals and deliverables

The primary goal of this article is to positively influence the attitude of our (senior) staff, who feel the need to be reassured that the company is still able to turn itself around. A secondary goal is to publicly praise the Widgets business unit team for its hard work. Ideally, the article will include a short overview of the business case underlying the plan, financials, and an overview of our product pipeline. The article should not exceed 1,200 words and include quotes from a board member and a business unit leader.

Resources and strategies

Interview a board member and business unit leader in order to get quotes, ask Finance for relevant data, and check with R&D what their pipeline looks like now. The tone should be realistic (acknowledging that the unit was underperforming two years ago) and confident (stressing the unit is now in a good shape).

The brief is rudimentary but covers all bases. You could add more background information on the situation in other business units, and a overview of where the industry is heading. Whatever you do, it is probably wise to involve leaders from the change process in developing the outline and commenting on draft versions of the text.

Another example of a brief deals with a fictitious speech for a Minister of Foreign Affairs, who needs to address a conference about the future of the UN. The issue is contentious and highly politicised, with this official’s country one of the few in favour of an overhaul of the UN. Based on the questions above, the brief could look something like this:

Background

The speech is held six months after the last roundtable of Ministers from UN nations. That conference yielded no specific decisions and was publicly branded a disaster. In the meantime, UN Security Council members have reiterated their opposition to an overhaul of the UN, fearing it would result in a permanent seat on the Council for emerging economies.

Goals and deliverables

The government wants to use this 15-minute speech (approximately 1,350 words) to galvanize negotiations. The speech should outline our position, acknowledge concerns of other member states and propose a solution that bridges both. The tone of the speech should be diplomatic yet self-assured: the language should communicate we are no longer willing to entertain new options but that we wish to quickly move forward.

Strategy and resources

Liaise with senior policy members for specific input on the government’s position and use statistics from past reports from the archive section on the server. The concept and final version of speech should be cleared with the Prime Minister’s advisors and possibly be discussed in next week’s Cabinet meeting.

Again, in a real-life situation such a brief could be more elaborate and specific, but this is just to show how even a short brief can focus the writer’s thinking and subsequent work. The brief helps the writer to sharpen his arguments and navigate the political quagmire of the conference.

The outline: foundation of success

Complex writing needs to be properly designed, just like houses need to designed before construction can commence. The outline – a bullet point list of what you are going to write about – is the blueprint that serves this purpose. Now, don’t worry about the grammatical and aesthetical quality of such a list, instead pay attention to whether the sequence of the bullet points is natural. Play around with the bullet points until you have the sequence that feels right to you or makes the most sense to your audience.

What does such an outline look like? In the case of the article for the in-house magazine about the recently finalised restructuring of the Widgets business unit, the outline could be as follows:

In response to the 2003 annual results, analysts downgraded stock from buy to hold. Analysts said Widget cost structure unacceptable compared to competitors. Product pipeline insufficiently filled, problematic after failed launch of new widget year earlier.
The Board largely agreed with analysts’ assessments and worked with Widget leaders to develop a restructuring plan. Company involved unions in all our countries to ensure smooth implementation later on.
Plan focused on three areas: labour cost, corporate culture and R&D. These areas could yield quick results without undermining strategy.
Labour cost: opted for laying off 1,200 staff, mainly administrative. Closed down smaller offices and worked with unions to enable early retirement. Main concern was maintaining R&D capacity and providing sufficient sales support in growth areas, in order to parry inroads by competitors.
Corporate culture: after years of lacklustre growth, culture of complacency. Feeling of responsibility and teamwork weakened, more emphasis on quick individual gains. Focused on re-engineering the culture while also promoting entrepreneurship (link to R&D). Introduced new performance-based pay and competence management.
R&D: acquired a small research company with Widget-related technology patents and hired 120 new engineers and scientists. Integrated labs for economies of scale and closed down two disappointing research projects. R&D staff bonuses tied to number of products in pipeline and speed at which they move through (HR link).
Implementation began early 2004, communicated results of benchmark study and announced goals and reasons for restructuring. Dedicated implementation project team with Board support.
Early results indicate cost structure now in line with industry norms and introduced 5 new projects into the pipeline. Our goal is to introduce one new project each quarter and bring one project to market each year.

In the case of the fictitious speech for the Minister on an overhaul of the UN, a possible outline could be:

Introduction

Ceremonial welcome to guests, congratulate host on organisation and hospitality. Reference to previous conference: dialogue remains key, many challenges remain.
Today’s meeting at a time of political and economic turmoil: terrorism, recessions, increasing competition for fossil fuels.
As a result of globalisation, our economies are intertwined: unilateral action futile, challenges require multilateral approach. This conference seeks way to achieve this.

Revamping the UN

Is existing UN able to execute such multilateral approaches? Opinions admittedly divided, but my government believes it is not. Inability of UN to deal with Somalia, Balkans and Iraq. Also: UN inefficient and corrupt.
Urgent need for reforms: modernise governance, increase scope of mandate, organisational and financial streamlining, broaden Security Council membership to reflect modern geopolitical status quo.
At same time, UN dialogue and action needs to be aligned with other forums such as WTO. We need to reorganise the UN, but we could explore idea of synchronising events at WTO and UN.
Cost of inaction larger than effort to achieve change. UN is vital, but only effective in a changed format.

Conclusion

Realise our views are radical, but we really feel the need to make a decision and move forward. This week’s conference should yield preliminary results. My government offers to host next conference.

As both outlines show, the structure of the story is essentially in place. There is already a logic as to how the different parts connect and what items will be discussed where. The outline is not particularly compelling, but it does what it’s supposed to do: focus your thinking and writing. To develop a good outline, you need to connect the dots and put some meat on the bones.

Restrictions and critical reviews

While writing the brief and outline, perhaps you noticed how you took a big picture approach to the issue(s) you wanted to write about. This is because the restrictions you placed on yourself in developing the brief and outline forced you to focus on what really mattered. From the perspective of writing, restrictions are an important habit to learn.

You can improve your focus by limiting the scope and scale of your writing. Limiting the scope means your story deals only with the essential issues, possibly substantiated by some data or one or two examples. Limiting the scale of your writing is as simple as agreeing not to write more than a specific number of words or pages, come what may. For example, you can decide to use no more than one page for a memo, two pages for an article or 30 pages for a business plan. Limitations force you to go for quality rather than quantity and your readers will love you for it!

A second way to improve focus is to critically review and edit your own work. It is easy to forget your self-imposed restrictions when the words are flowing, but your writing can become tiresome if you don’t control it. The only cure to excessive writing – painful though it is - is to surgically remove all excess words, sentences, anecdotes and repetitions. The trick is to remain unattached to the writing (and your own ego, see chapter on humility) and delete anything that doesn’t add to the text. More about this in the chapter on clarity.

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