business writing

Caturday Quickies: What’s the deal with Briefing Notes?

/ Melanie Marttila

The first time I heard the term ‘briefing note’ was when I was serving on a working group to set up a new unit to handle special enquiries for my business line.  Part of my roll on the working group was to source no-cost training for the unit as we did not have a budget.

Of course, I wasn’t informed of this particular lack of resource until after I’d found and started making arrangements for some fairly cost-intensive training on the subject.

The only free resources I could find were a couple of templates on our intranet.  No examples.

The next time I encountered a briefing note was during an exam for the assessment process that resulted in my current acting assignment as a Business Expertise Consultant (BEC).

I was asked to write one for the exam, and using only those two skimpy templates, I managed to write a briefing note sufficient to pass, and apparently with high marks.

Though the position of BEC includes the responsibility of writing briefing notes, I haven’t been clear on whether the reports, learning plans, proposals, etc. that I’ve been writing for my manager fall into that category.

I had had a course on briefing note writing on my personal learning agreement (PLA) for years, and this past week, I finally got the opportunity to attend.

So what is a briefing note?

A briefing note is a document used, as the name implies, to brief high level executives on various topics for various reasons.

I know that sounds vague, so I’ll give you a few examples to clarify:

  1. A news article appears that discusses a product or service that your business is implementing, but no formal press release has been made.  Executives responsible for that portfolio may need to be briefed on the nature of the coverage to see it there may be any impact, positive or negative, on the product’s or service’s release.
  2. An ongoing project needs to be altered due to unforeseen or uncontrollable issues (read scope creep).  The executive officer will need to be made aware of these changes, though they may have no direct oversight of the project in question.  If it’s under their umbrella, they need to know in the event their superiors, or external partners, ask.
  3. A court case involving your business is ongoing, or an appeal has been launched.  You will have to keep chief executives informed of the progress without weighing them down with a lot of superfluous legal information.

Does that help?

What I learned

  • What I’ve been writing does not fall into the category of briefing notes, though many of these documents serve the same or similar purposes.  What I learned in the one-day course can still be applied to the documents I need to produce.
  • If my unit has to write briefing notes of any description, there should be a set of unit-specific templates and examples on our shared drive (there are not).  I think I may have to see if we can gather some of these together (!).
  • Audience analysis is the single most important factor in writing a briefing note, or any other correspondence to upper management.  You need to know what they need to know.  If you don’t, make sure that someone who is privy to this information reviews your document before you submit it.  For me, this would be my manager.
  • Always think in terms of the absolute minimum that the executive needs to make decisions and otherwise conduct the business.
  • The directors, executive directors, and senior executive directors who might see my communications are a little lower on the totem pole than the chief executives to whom a briefing is generally directed.
  • The difference between an annex and an appendix: an annex is referred to in the body of a briefing note; an appendix is additional information that has not been referenced in the main document.
  • Summaries are optional unless the briefing note exceeds one page, or the summary is required in your unit or business line (which would be reflected in your template set).

Other than that, it’s a matter of using proper business writing principles, plain language,

pen.jpg

pen.jpg (Photo credit: new1mproved)

and impeccable grammar.

I have another tool in my writing arsenal now, something I’ll be able to keep in my back pocket until I need to use it.

Do you have to write briefing notes for your employer?  Will any of the information I shared be of use to you?  I won’t claim to be an expert now, but if you have any questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.  The research will help me to retain what I’ve learned 🙂

Breaking open the mind …

/ Melanie Marttila

A word about my day job

My day job is as a corporate trainer: I teach staff in my business to do their jobs.  In the last year or so, I’ve become much more aware of the industry I’m in, and the oh-so-interesting social, psychological, and economic impact I can have simply by going to work every day and doing my job.

The title of his blog category, breaking open the mind, is a nod to Daniel Pinchbeck’s Breaking Open the Head:  A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Shamanism, and though no mind-altering substances—unless you count knowledge—were used, that’s exactly what it feels like.  I’m back in university, and my mind is being blown.

I worked for a year as a trainer in my department before I really understood what I was doing and what I could be doing in comparison.  Yes, I’d been introduced to participant centered training delivery, but that was in-class, and the world of training seemed to be so much bigger than that.  Online asynchronous, synchronous, and blended methodologies were becoming predominant in the industry outside my workplace, and I had a feeling that we should be moving in that direction.  There was no evidence that we were though, and for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me.  I hadn’t developed as a trainer sufficiently to be able to articulate this feeling; I didn’t even know what the terms asynchronous, synchronous, and blended referred to; and without being able to express my feeling, I couldn’t consciously process the information.

That will give you some insight into how my mind works.  Shamanism and corporate training:  in the world of the learning mutt, they mesh 🙂

Business writing

Last week I spent a few days in a business writing course, first as a student, to learn the content, then as a trainer, to work on the implementation of the training for my department.

It was a great refresher, and I did learn a few things.

My main takeaway: I’m a grammar Nazi, and proud of it!  I’m not ashamed to admit that I can detect verb or pronoun agreement issues at 50 paces.  I can generally advise which word should be used (e.g. advise, or advice) and will visibly twitch when someone says ‘irregardless,’ or speaks about how a new policy impacts staff.  It has an impact on staff, unless it’s the equivalent a meteor hurtling toward the earth!

Recently, a few blog postings on grammar have come my way:

In fairness, I should also post this response:

Yes, I believe that English is a living language, and as such, is in flux, as are its ‘rules.’  Common usage does eventually get entered into the Oxford English Dictionary.  In fact, I think that irregardless has been entered in some dictionaries already thanks to its rampant misuse.

I’ll remind everyone that we aren’t living in the days before a dictionary of any kind existed.  We now have excellent tools like spell and grammar check to alert us to potential issues.  I recommend that every writer in any professional context use them.  In order to use these tools though, a familiarity with the basics of good grammar is necessary.  How else will you know what to ignore and what to change?

If for no other reason, a writer should use proper language and punctuation because it might rankle with a manager, prospective employer, agent, or editor and scuttle any chance of advancement or publication.

In training design, good grammar is imperative.  You have to model what you want your participants to emulate in practice.  Professionalism shouldn’t be a swear word in the workplace.

Having said all that, I must offer this apology:  I am not perfect.  I make spelling and grammar errors, but I correct them when possible, and try to learn from them what I can.  Such is the life of a learning mutt  🙂

Some grammar resources (for those who wish to improve):

Also, for a fun book about grammar check out Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

So do you know your shit, or just know you’re shit?  Do you hate me now that you know I’m a grammar Nazi?  No Writerly Goodness for you!