Policy Writing Skills Series: Getting it done quickly
Image: @zmachacek
Have you ever received a request for a brief or memo at the start of the day, only to be told that it needs to be completed by noon? This was a weekly occurrence for me during collaborations with various Federal and global partner organizations during the pandemic. I’ll confess that at the start of this period I was pretty bad at this sort of writing, being too used to the comparatively slow and stop-start nature of workflow in academia. But I like to think I improved rapidly -over time, requests from partners to ‘make it shorter and clearer’ were less frequent and my own anxieties at letting my work go diminished significantly.
With that in mind, this post wastes no time! The biggest challenge when writing policy materials against a tight deadline is producing high quality content, especially when the task requires explanation of technical topics, generation of complex images or quickly analyzing data. AI tools can be helpful in generating text, but they are also prone to inaccuracies and bias.
Here are some writing ‘process tips’ that can help you to get things done on time without sacrificing quality:
Preparation is key
A bit of preparation in advance helps when you get hit with a rapid turnaround project. Fortunately, there are simple things you can do to be efficient in the moment, such as:
Don’t create from scratch. Get to know the templates function of relevant software and make a few key templates for significant products that you think your audience might need. If you have one, start by adapting an existing brief. If they are appropriate and you feel comfortable using them, autocomplete functions and AI tools can help you to generate text more quickly, but using them will also require careful thinking about how to ensure accuracy.
Know the rules (or make the rules). Understanding or creating general rules in advance can prevent you from making costly mistakes in the moment. If your organization has policies for logo use and branding, images, charts, or writing style, make sure you are familiar with them and keep them to hand. If there aren’t existing rules for these things in your organization, you might want to figure out what rules or procedures are appropriate and how to create them. You should pay special attention to the rules of attribution -if you use other people’s images, data, research, or knowledge, how will those people be credited? Will some people (like artists or graphic designers) need to be compensated, and what should that look like? If the topic you are addressing involves work with partner organizations or benefits from the knowledge of community members, how should that be acknowledged?
Build horizon scanning into your regular work day. If you have topics you regularly follow where you might need to comment on short notice, pay attention to how you update your knowledge about those topics. Can you compile lists of useful resources that you check regularly? Can you automate this process in any way? How can you time limit and manage this process to avoid doomscrolling or getting lost in information ‘rabbit holes’?
Create systems to capture important information and insights. Where do the results of your horizon scanning go? When something you read in a piece of research, in the news, or on social media inspires a key thought, or contains an important piece of information, do you have a process to capture it? Keeping on track during a time crunch means planning a systematic process for capturing these insights in advance. That way, when
Prioritize prep. The above actions are pretty obvious, but we often don’t schedule time to do them in relatively calm periods. Figure out what time or other resources you might need to prepare and prioritize that preparation as much as you can!
Team up
Time sensitive tasks require a deeper bench. Responding constantly to time-sensitive requests over a long period (like a pandemic) is an excellent recipe for burnout. To combat this, you should try to maximize your support as much as possible -whether by building your own team, joining an existing team, or leveraging organizational expertise and resources. If you are the only person working on the task, consider who in your organization or community can support you, and in what capacity.
Assign roles and communicate expectations clearly. Ideally, in a time crunch, your team should be working in parallel to be most effective. This requires that each person is clear about their tasks and how long they have to complete them. Across your team, make sure you have a good sense of each person’s skills and experiences, so that when the time comes to assign tasks, you can lean into individual strengths. Make sure that all of your team members have access to the information you have collected during your prep about relevant policies and procedures.
Keep track of your past actions. The first time you produce something, briefly document how you did it, so that present and future collaborators have a roadmap for further work or answering questions about existing products. Keep notes on relevant information hubs, data sources, or scientific and grey literature in a place that the whole team can easily access.
Stick to the basics
Communicate with your audience. Ensure you are clear about the audience for your work and their expectations for the final product. If you have a client, ask them for a shortlist of specific questions they need answered rather than a general topic for the brief. Probe them on any technical terms or acronyms they use to make sure you have a mutual understanding, and get a sense of how much your expertise overlaps with theirs. If you are targeting a more general audience or the public, think carefully about how they will encounter the information and how to make your brief as accessible as possible. Your team will need to exercise cultural competence in determining the content of the brief and in creating a dissemination plan.
Consider other audiences. Once you have released the product, you often don’t have much control over how it is shared. Even in the event that you are working with proprietary data or writing a brief that will not be shared publicly, it is good practice to treat all products as publicly available. This is even more important in a time crunch situation, where the risk of people sharing the material in inappropriate ways is higher.
Define the simplest product. Early on, consider whether you are promising the simplest product that responds to the questions you are asking. You should stage your goals for the work -asking yourself what is the minimum you can deliver on time, and separating out further work into ‘stretch goals’, to be accomplished if you have any extra time. Make sure that you make these expectations clear with any client.
Clearer and shorter. Once you have determined the most straightforward product you can deliver in the time, make sure that you are aiming for the most transparent and brief communication of your findings. Techniques for writing clearly in a short period of time include rapid outlining, where you sketch out the whole brief using bullet points and headers first, then go back to fill in complete sentences, and parallel processing, in which you compile notes on research and data in a different document from your writing, but switch back and forth between them. Some people find that dictating text, or talking about the topic with a colleague and transcribing it in real time, are helpful practices. Creating ‘parking lots’ for extraneous text edited from the main brief can be an effective way to let go of anxieties about edits and allow you to see the impacts of cuts quickly.
Don’t skimp on editing
Flexible quality control. Working quickly and in parallel can be messy. You should create a clear but simple process that governs the point at which you move from an ‘all skate’ approach to one or two points of contact who conduct quality control and ensure delivery. Create a simple handoff process for this and ensure everyone on your team follows it.
Last pass messaging. As part of this process, make sure that one named person is responsible for checking the core message of the brief, which should be summarized at the start of the product using text or both text and a graphic. As this is the first thing that a time pressured person will see, you should make this as crystal clear as possible. Consider whether the use of a straightforward dashboard, graphic, or traffic light presentation of key data is relevant.
Use automation to check your work. Even if your writing is ordinarily excellent, time pressure can degrade your skills significantly. There’s no shame in getting help when it comes to proofreading and checking your work. You might consider investing in ‘check as you write’ grammar and spelling software.
Nail the delivery. Deliver the final product in a form that is accessible to your audience -both content and format. Material that does not match your audience’s expectations regarding length, level of detail, research or data content, or visualizations is useless. So are file formats that the intended recipients can’t access.
