You’ve been working on that RFQ or proposal for weeks. It’s 45 pages longs, with charts, diagrams, photos, facts, figures and lots of details. It was a tremendous effort, but it was worth it. This report will show the leaders of your company how valuable and important you are – if they read it.
That’s right. “If they read it.” Just because it’s important to YOU doesn’t meant that it’s important to THEM. You may be impressed with how thorough and detailed it is, but your boss just thinks it’s LONG (and probably boring!). How do you get him to read it?
Wouldn’t it be great if you could take out all the technical details & boring parts and just give him a simple summary that explains, “This is why you should care about my idea!” Well — you can, and you should. You are going to write something called an “Executive Summary” that explains all the important ideas quickly, clearly and simply.
Writing an Executive Summary
An Executive Summary is an independent “stand-alone” document that explains the business motivation supporting a larger proposal or report. It explains all the important business issues and conclusions contained in the complete report – but none of the technical details.
Think about a sales proposal for a new factory project. To cover all the necessary information and answer all the technical and financial questions, the report must be quite large and detailed. It will be used by a variety of people doing many different jobs within the company. Engineers, production people, marketers, salesmen, investors, contractors, and just about everyone else involved in the project. Sales proposals and other comprehensive project proposals are like a blueprint for a new business. They are extremely detailed and technical.
But does your boss – or HIS boss – really need to read all those technical details? Your company probably has a very simple business reason for considering this project. You either need to produce more things for less money, or you have a new investment opportunity, or you want to expand your market. Whatever the reason for doing this project, it can probably be described in a few simple sentences. That won’t tell whole story, of course, but it will tell the reader what you are writing about, and what your proposed solution is.
An executive summary is NOT an introduction to a long report. (You still have to write an introduction, so don’t forget it!) It is a separate document that can be read all by itself. A good executive summary uses graphs and charts to send a message quickly and clearly.
Imagine your company- or your client’s board of directors gave you 5 minutes of their time to explain why the company should invest ten million rmb in a new factory in Wuxi. What would you tell them? Well, if you are smart you’ll start by talking about how profitable it will be. Then you’ll talk about the costs and the schedule. Next you’ll explain about the benefits of this plan and the potential drawbacks. You’ll also describe the risks. If the new project involves any partners, you will of course describe who they are and what they will be contributing. 5 minutes goes by quickly, but if you can explain this basic information than the board will know all the main facts and can decide if it is worth their time to learn more.
An executive summary is the same thing, but written out. It should be brief – a maximum of two pages, though some people prefer one page. It should completely but briefly describe the important business points of the larger report and allow the reader to decide if he agrees with the idea or not.
Business Rationale only
This is the document that your boss’ boss will read – and probably the ONLY document – concerning this project. Focus only on the business reasons supporting your conclusion. What do the Big Bosses care about? Profit and loss. Expenses and schedules. What is supposed to happen – and what can go wrong. Tell them how much money they are going to make, how they are going to make it, when it will happen – and what may go wrong. If what you are saying makes sense, then they will read about the interesting methods and the cool technology you plan on using.
Show it first, Write it last
The executive summary should be the first part of your report that the reader sees (right after the table of contents). But it is not the first thing you write. When you are putting together a complicated proposal or report, your opinions may change as you uncover more and more detailed information. You will learn more about the subject and about the options that you are proposing and rejecting. If you try to write you executive summary first you will be building in many inaccurate assumptions. Wait until AFTER you have already developed the perfect plan that takes into account all possible contingencies and possibilities. Then sit down and summarize your findings into a persuasive executive summary.
Be Factual – But Persuasive
The people that you most need to convince are the ones least likely to read the entire report. Remember one of the uglier rules of large organizations – many people can say “NO”, but only a few can say “YES”.
If your executive summary is not convincing or persuasive, there is a good chance that the top people in your company will decide to save themselves a lot of time and effort by just saying no. Even if your summary is convincing and well-written, most readers will never go on to read your entire report.
The most common situation is that someone reads your executive summary and then goes to the part of the main report that applies to them. The COO will use the executive summary to get a general overview of the project, and then skip directly to the technical section. The CFO only cares about the financial parts.
That’s why it really is worth the effort to write a good summary. This is your only chance to sell the project, because if the executive summary doesn’t grab them, then they’ll never even look at the report. So take the time to consider the reader’s point of view and do everything you can to persuade him that this project benefits him. If the winning argument is in the executive summary, then you’ll win. If the winning argument shows up for the first time on page 23, you lose.
Source: http://bestpracticeschina.com
