Begin with the end in mind.

As far as financial writing is concerned I suppose what I mean is that first you need to understand what outcome the document should produce. Is it a decision? For information? To persuade someone? To sell something? To be accountable?

If you want a decision from the reader — your boss, perhaps, then make it clear that is the purpose of the document. You might put the recommended way forward right at the top of the document, with the remainder of the document being your reasons and advice for the recommendation.

If you are simply reporting something for information, make that clear, but, more than that, if there are key messages you want to communicate then make them obvious.

If you are not clear what outcome you want (i.e. the purpose of a document is not clear) then that is good to know—it is always good to know what you do not know, because you can do something about it. Maybe you can ask the recipient what they want, or ask your manager to advise you. Perhaps they don’t know what the purpose is either. If that is the case then it would be a chance for everyone to clarify what is really needed.

The content and the layout of your words, tables and charts should make it easy for the reader to get what they need. If the point of the document is to give advice to make a decision then that should be clear to the reader right from the start. And don’t include anything you don’t need.

The key to presenting information helpfully is to distinguish the way you solve a problem from the way in which you should present the solution.

To solve a problem you start at the beginning and work through the analysis logically until you reach the conclusion. Conventional business writing makes the reader work through the same process. It is as if the writer wanted to communicate to the reader: I’ve worked very hard to get this answer and I want you to know it. Or even worse: I’ve worked very hard to get this answer and I want you to work hard too!

Don’t do the conventional. Make it easy for your reader to get your message. Even if your organisation has templates for its reports and other documents, that does not mean you cannot complete each templated section using the mindset of what does the reader need to know and what is the best order for presenting that information?

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