In 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote the following to his First Lord of the Admiralty:
“Pray state this day, on one side of a sheet of paper, how the Royal Navy is being adapted to meet the conditions of modern warfare.”
Some call it the “Executive Summary.” Less formal people might call it “the Reader’s Digest version.”
What you call it doesn’t really matter. You may have mastered the intricate details of a project or considered all the nuanced variations of a proposal. But your boss or the Budget Committee or a potential funding source usually won’t want to go into the details until you’ve given them a persuasive summary.
Your challenge is to answer the important questions. But how do you know what they are, especially if the person who’ll be judging your idea is someone you don’t know?
You can draw on research done by Dr. William Miller when he was at SRI International. He identified a limited number of questions that cover the range of important issues for most people
I’ve modified his findings slightly to make them more usable for my clients. There are five questions you should answer in your summary. Here they are.
What’s the goal? There are many different terms for this. You’ll hear “end state” and “objective” and “reason” and “purpose” and many others.
Just describe how the world will be different when everything is done. This is also the place to highlight reasons why the person reading your summary will benefit from doing what you want.
Who will be involved? Explain briefly who will be affected by what you propose. Describe who will need to be part of the project.
What’s the process? Lay out the first step and succeeding steps that will get your from start to finish. Save the detailed timelines for the appendix of your proposal.
What resources will we need? People, time, money, equipment, and authority are all resources. Just hit the high points in your summary.
What’s interesting? Outline the most interesting or fascinating or novel thing about your proposal.
This kind of brief summary is longer than an elevator speech, but way shorter than the whole proposal. If you need to deliver it orally, limit yourself to about 300 words. That will take about two minutes.
Your written version should follow Sir Winston’s guideline: one side of a sheet of paper. Have an introduction and close of a sentence or two each. Have one paragraph of three sentences max for each question.
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