In-house workshops on senior management reports and board papers

Improve the quality of your people’s writing skills with an in-house writing course on how to write effective senior management reports or board papers. These courses are tailored to meet your organisation’s writing needs, based on discussion and reading samples of your reports or papers.

Draft outline of a senior management or board paper workshop (half-day or full-day)

• Senior management or board expectations. The workshop could be introduced by a member of the executive team.
• Qualities of effective reports and papers. A discussion on the different types of reports and papers that participants write (e.g. noting, decision-making, discussion, financial and non-financial). What works and what doesn’t work.
• Use your template well. Templates are useful for consistency, but they can also be constraining. This session looks at how to use your organisation's template well.
• Write from the executive or board’s point of view. What do senior executives or directors want and need to know? Writers need to plan and structure their writing from their readers' point of view; not their own.
• Write a concise, yet complete report or paper. Reports and papers needs to be concise, yet satisfy the executive team or board that writers have done their homework.
• Brush up on the basics. Writers need to get to the point in plain language. This session provides some commonsense writing tips on paragraphs, sentences, bulleted lists and word choice.
• Write to influence and recommend. Writing to influence does not mean putting a ‘positive spin’ on information. Instead, writers need to use specific language, build a compelling case and write clear recommendations.
• Make good use of visual aids (e.g. graphs and tables). Many executives and directors like visual aids, but as with writing, visuals need to have a clear purpose and message.
• Editing and proofreading. The session provides some editing tips to help writers avoid distracting errors and inconsistencies.

Reinforce report writing skills after a workshop

Too many people go to a workshop and it is a 'done the course, tick the box' experience and what they have learnt doesn't transfer to the workplace. To consolidate what participants learn in the workshop, we recommend following up with:

• a half-day workshop a few weeks later
• individual tuition (1 hr) for each participant
• a seminar with senior executives to give them some tips on how to reinforce good writing skills.

For more information contact Mary on 61 (0)2 9365 7711 or mary@themfactor.com.au