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Structures for particular document types
Well, let me talk about some structures for particular purposes.
Structure for a business case or proposal
If you are writing a business case or a proposal, that type of content, this type of structure has been around for a while and it works pretty well:
We start off by talking about the situation, what’s going on at the moment. And then we say, hang on a minute. There’s a problem. We talk about some complication of some type. Once we’ve identified that complication, we then crystallise that into a focusing question and then we provide our answer. Our solution to the problem, our answer to that focusing question.
So like I say, that’s been around for a while and it’s been a very effective way of presenting business cases and proposals – that type of content.
Let me show you an example of that from my world. A while ago I was running a programme called Plain Language Pro which was all around certifying documents. This is how I would talk about that programme to financial planners.
The situation that they’re in is that they’re working under the Corporations Act and that Act says that they need to provide statements of advice in a way that they are worded so that they are clear, concise and effective. That’s the situation that financial planners are working in. The complication they have is that they’re communicating complex information and that can be really tricky. Thefocusing question became, how can financial planners demonstrate they’ve taken seriously their duty to communicate in a way that is clear, concise and? And then my solution answered the question, the certification programme actually did demonstrate that they’d taken seriously that duty to communicate clearly, concisely and effectively.
Structure for answering questions
If you’re in a situation where you’re answering questions or objections, here is an example structure can work really well.
If a politician ever chooses to answer a question, sometimes they use this type of structure. So somebody poses a question and they’ll respond to that question. Yeah, here’s my answer to that question. And then they might provide the reason for it, some justification or rationale for that response. And then they might provide an example or a story – some way of making that concrete.
Structure for reflective learning
If you’re in a situation where you’re doing some reflective learning, I find this structure works really well. It’s what we did, what we learned, and so now we should.
For example, if I was writing an incident report in a coal mine, it might go something like this.
I might tell the story of what happened. Hey, the tractor driver drove over the pipes.
And then I’ll talk about what we learned. The tractor driver can’t see the pipes.
Ah, what are we going to do? Hey, how about we paint all the pipes yellow?
So that type of structure works well for reflective learning.
Structures for reviews, evaluations or assessments
If you’re involved in writing an assessment or a review of some sort, I think this type of structure works well, and it’s actually an application of this idea of point first.
I’m going to start by telling you what your performance is, how I’ve rated it. I’ll put my conclusion right at the very beginning.
And then I’m going to say, I know that is true because this is what I observed.
And then I might talk about, look, if you want to improve that or change that in some way, how about you consider these ideas?
Audit vs evaluation
Just while I’m mentioning assessments and reviews, be aware that there are two types of questions that you can ask in an assessment. One’s an audit question and the other one’s an evaluation question.
The audit question is all about have I done what I said I would do.
The evaluation question is all about did I achieve the outcome?
Now both questions are valid and you can use them both in assessment or review. But it’s helpful to distinguish between those two types of questions and the type of information that they will provide to you.
Structure for procedures
I like to think about a procedure as a transformation, and that’s what I start the procedure with. I’ll start my procedure with a big picture statement that says this process transforms us from this state into this state.
Then as I write the procedure, clearly I’m going to have a chronological organisation. It’s going to be step 1, Step 2, Step 3.
Now if I’ve got some warnings that I need to provide, I would need to make sure that I provide those warnings before I get to the instruction, but not too far away. What I’ve got in mind by that is sometimes when you buy an electrical appliance – a coffee grinder or something like that – you have a look at the booklet that it comes with. You’ll see in Chapter 1 there’s all the warnings, all the things you should or shouldn’t do. The electrical dangers and so on. What do you do with chapter one? I’m just going to flip past that. I want to find out how to use the thing.
So in that case, yes, the warnings are before the instructions, but they’re too far away to be of any use. So put your warnings before the instructions, but keep them fairly close.
The other thing to keep in mind when you’re writing procedures is to remember that in any procedure there are both thinking tasks and doing tasks. And sometimes it’s really helpful to separate those out. To say, these are the things that you have some discretion over, and these are some things that you don’t have discretion over.
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