Writing to Engage Busy Decision Makers

Our goal: dive, not discard

Slides 1–4.

Our goal: write clear, concise, compelling briefs and papers that engage and inform busy decision makers.

Dive? Or discard? Readers decide fast. We have to engage decision makers quickly:

• An email gets 11–17 seconds.
• A web page gets about 10 seconds.
• A one-page memo gets about 45 seconds.

Back to top

Align: know your users

Slides 5–11.

Four questions align your writing to the decision makers who read it:

• What key goals and priorities do these decision makers value?
• What information, direction, report, or requests do users expect to see?
• What do they already know about the topic?
• What beliefs and preferences exist? Culture and tradition, mental, social and organizational norms have powerful influence. Let your understanding inform how you position info and insights for this audience.

Try it: assess your users

Get to know your users:

1. What do I know about them?
2. What must I learn about them?
3. What do they want to do?
4. How do they use this information?

Back to top

Align: know your goal and your role

Slides 12–17.

What’s your goal?

• A. I seek meaningful insights and convey them to others to compel action. I want to highlight a particular view of the data to create a coherent data story.
• B. I want to provide information in a way that does not lead others in a particular direction or toward a specific conclusion. I do not want to limit the ways in which readers can interpret the data.

Know your role: the analytics path to value

Seeking value: from data to action.

• Collect raw data to gain knowledge on a subject.
• Organize and summarize the data to create reports that convey useful information.
• Users examine and analyze reports to discover meaningful insights.
• Insights inform decisions and drive actions that create value.

The path runs data → information → insight → decision → action → value. Where do you drop your pin? Most writers in this course work at the information and insight stops.

Back to top

Developing strong problem statements

Slides 18–19.

A strong problem statement, as one example:

Prior authorization delays patient care, overloads doctors with paperwork, and causes patients to abandon treatments. 94% of doctors say it slows access to needed care. 30% report that these delays have caused serious health issues like hospitalization, disability, or even death.

Back to top

Align: data, info, and insights

Slides 20–30.

Finding central insights: story framing

Story framing helps you seek data and insights that help solve problems and seize opportunities that need attention now. As you select data and insights to highlight, first answer three questions:

• What do these decision makers prioritize?
• How do they make decisions?
• What decision-making framework will they use?

Decision makers need actionable insights

Consider an insight you might include in an analysis or summary. Does it have high value and strong relevance? Let’s find out. Actionable insights provide the right info, at the right time, to the right audience. They:

• Directly answer questions posed.
• Relate directly to a problem or opportunity these decision makers consider a high priority.
• Address litigation, an audit finding, executive order, or task force that prompted this research, report, or action.
• Support an action that holds high public value.

Well-supported insights: do you have strong and vetted data to support a precise, inclusive, and conclusive insight statement?

The right audience: decision makers who have authority and ability to act on the insight.

Linking insights to recommendations

What’s the potential impact?

• Connect the insights and supporting data to state why your recommendation best solves the problem you defined.
• Connect the insights and supporting data to directly answer questions posed. Engage as you inform.
• Create a clear, compelling statement of impact beyond your program.

Assessing information and insights

Decision makers must forecast how decisions might help or harm the communities we serve.

• How might your recommendations change things for the public, your agency, and other involved parties?
• How did you arrive at these conclusions?

Addressing equity impacts. Engage and partner with interested and affected parties to answer two key questions:

• What target populations and communities benefit from each course of action?
• How might the action exclude, marginalize, or disproportionately affect any group?

Assessing collateral connections. What collateral connections exist between your agency and tribal, regional, county, or city governments on this issue? Outside of government, whom might your proposed solution interest or affect? What known support or opposition exists? How might it impact the workforce? How might it impact state facilities?

Legal and legislative impacts. Finally, assess and address key legal and legislative impacts:

• Did litigation, an audit finding, executive order, or task force prompt this research, report, or action?
• Would a decision to act require a change to any statute, rule, or contract?

Back to top

Engage and inform: choosing how to convey insights

Slides 31–39.

Three ways to convey key info and insights:

• Tell a data story. Use when you want data insights to inspire change.
• BLUF + pyramid. Use to capture attention, inform, direct, request, recommend. BLUF means bottom line up front.
• Required formats. Max potential inside required formats and templates.

Where do the key insights fall on this scale?

The slide shows seven sliders, each running from a green left end to a red right end: agreeable to unpleasant, conventional to disruptive, expected to unexpected, simple to complex, safe to risky, inexpensive to costly, intuitive to counterintuitive. The further your insights sit toward the right ends, the more a data story earns its place; insights near the left ends suit the inverted pyramid.

Consider telling a data story

Culture and tradition, mental, social and organizational norms have powerful influence. What stories do people tell themselves and others when they think about this problem, issue, or opportunity? What narratives already exist?

Many of our thoughts are stories. Our natural path to action:

• We see or hear something.
• Our brain makes sense of it and tells us a story.
• We experience emotion based on the story.
• We act.

What do you observe in this photo? The class studies a photo: the inside of a wrecked motorhome—shattered windshield, collapsed ceiling beam, debris across mildewed seats. Fact or story? Which of your observations were facts, and which were stories your brain supplied?

Conveying key info and insights. Data stories help compel action by putting analytics in context. Use data stories when you want to highlight a particular view of the data to tell a coherent story.

A narrative structure for data stories

1. Setting and hook.
2. Rising action: insights.
3. Major finding or central insight.
4. Solution and next steps.

Back to top

The data story in action: abandoned RVs

Slides 40–49.

Let’s tell a data story. Each beat pairs a chart with its takeaway. The data used for this analysis is fictional; it reflects state records and reports on abandoned RVs, and the figures represent reported cases in 2019.

• The hook: 28% of abandoned RVs in the US are on Washington roadways. A bar chart compares roughly 2,350 RVs abandoned across all US states combined with about 650 in Washington State alone—nearly one third of the national total.
• Elsewhere, owners come back: in most US states, 60% of impounded RVs have owners who pay to recover them; about 40% are truly abandoned. Not in Washington.
• In Washington, most impounded RVs are truly abandoned—about 55% truly abandoned against 45% impounded. Risks and costs of collection and disposal shift to the public, tow operators, and municipalities.
• Where it lands: in Washington, urban areas receive twice as many requests to impound abandoned RVs as rural areas—a line chart shows Washington near 65% urban falling to about 35% rural while other states sit flat at 50%. Most abandoned RVs in Washington sit on city streets.
• Why urban: urban areas have limited or insufficient facilities for RV parking, dumping, and disposal. Urban areas also have stricter regulations regarding RV parking and habitation. Owners in financial distress abandon their vehicles when faced with fines, towing, or legal enforcement.
• The hazards: Washington cities have a unique problem centered on structure, environmental, health, and safety hazards present in these abandoned vehicles. A chart of hazards reported in urban abandoned RVs in 2019: substances that directly impact marine ecosystems (about 70%), leaks or spills of hazardous fluids (about 60%), outdated or malfunctioning waste disposal systems (about 50%), lead-based paint or asbestos (about 40%), weakened floors and walls and structural integrity issues (about 30% each).
• The system strains: Washington operators declined 20% of requests to tow abandoned RVs in 2019, while calls for service increased 30%. Hazardous materials, high unrecoverable costs for RVs that receive no bids at auction, and employee safety lead operators to refuse requests. The chart of reasons: high unrecoverable disposal costs (about 90%), limited capacity to hold and lack of proper disposal facilities (about 85%), presence of hazardous materials (about 80%), legal and regulatory compliance (about 60%), safety concerns (about 45%), lack of training or resources (about 25%).

The story’s problem statement:

Traditional disposal methods no longer solve the problem of abandoned RVs in Washington.

Using story well:

• Use story to give meaning to facts and data.
• Present facts as facts and story as story.
• Tell brief, clear, and focused stories.

BLUF + the inverted pyramid: a great method to engage and equip decision makers.

Back to top

Experiencing information design

Slides 50–54.

Good information design gives writing FLOW:

• Follows logical order: logic flows from users’ points of view. Rich summaries everywhere—meets users’ info needs up front.
• Lets users skim and succeed: users choose and use what they need. Clear, concise words boost reading ease and accessibility.
• Organizes ideas visually and verbally: pairs visuals with words; uses visuals wisely. Provides the same info in great written summaries.
• Works for users: uses clear words customers use. Feels like conversation; human-centered information design.

In class, you experience information design directly: you will make the decision. What have we asked you to do?

Bottom line up front

The inverted pyramid runs top to bottom:

1. Conclusion, recommendation, or request.
2. Central insight.
3. Key findings.
4. Invite action or restate the conclusion.

Breakout activity: convey key insights using BLUF and data stories.

Back to top

Choosing words wisely

Slides 55–61.

Provide clear, concise content and great summary statements. How do I do that?

• Choose clear, concise words.
• Write mainly in the active voice.
• Cut all clutter.
• Write short sentences and paragraphs.

Try it: convey your message in simple, clear words

Try a simpler, clearer swap for each word below, then open the reveal.

• demonstrate
• implement
• subsequent
• initiate
• detrimental
• pertaining to
• consequence
• cognizant
• antithesis
• verification

Back to top

Write mainly in the active voice

Slides 62–68.

1. Step 1: first, notice passive linking verbs—especially when they don’t link to an active verb: am, is, are, was, were, be, been.
2. Step 2: answer these questions, in order. What happens in this sentence? To find the verb. Who or what makes it happen? To find the subject.
3. Step 3: place the subjects and verbs that work together to show who (or what) does what. This creates an active subject-verb-object sentence structure.

Try it: make the statement active

Projects may require statutory changes, and these should be addressed prior to securing legislative funding for high-cost projects.

More try-it practice follows in class.

Back to top

Cut all clutter

Slides 69–77.

Fluff n’ stuff:

• Long-winded windups.
• Phrases where a word does the job.
• Adverbs, usually. Obviously. Clearly.
• Redundancies without purpose.

Say what? One real example of clutter at work:

“. . . short term variable remuneration to elicit discretionary effort.”

Use a word, not a phrase

Try one word (or two) in place of each phrase, then open the reveal.

• has the ability to
• in accordance with
• in order to
• in the course of
• in view of the fact that
• per our policy

Putting it all together: one passage, decluttered

Here is a real passage, with its readability scores:

As a result, recipients and subrecipients of federal financial assistance are responsible for taking reasonable steps to ensure meaningful access by LEP persons to the recipients’ and sub-recipients’ programs or activities, including the use of an interpreter.

Reading ease: 0.0. Grade level: 22.7. One sentence of 37 words.

Try your own rewrite, then open the reveals.

Back to top

Short sentences and paragraphs

Slides 78–83.

Use short sentences and paragraphs to group and present information. First, feel the problem—read this once:

Without appropriate resources to guarantee sufficient staff for business process development, identify system improvements, perform user acceptance testing, and provide stakeholder training, we are shifting resources from business needs supporting our customers to completing these critical tasks.

Quick paraphrase user test—what did you just read?

The readability statistics for that passage: 37 words, one sentence, reading ease 0.0, grade level 24.6.

Keep sentences under 18 words

Knock down the first barrier to high reading ease. The slide charts sentence length against the share of readers who understand after one reading: 44 words, 8 percent; 33 words, 31 percent; 17 words, 97 percent.

What about paragraphs?

Keep paragraphs short:

• For print: seven typed lines, max.
• For screens: four typed lines, max.

Back to top

Wrap-up

Slides 84–85.

What questions do you have? The course closes with discussion.

Great work! Please share your thoughts. Select your course evaluation link in the chat. You can also reach it from the Learning Center home page: SELF, then Learning, then Learning Activity Evaluations.

Back to top