Executive briefings

What an executive briefing is

An executive briefing is a two-page document written for the person who decides but will not read the long version. It opens with the finding, states what that finding means for this particular reader, gives the few facts that support it, and ends by naming the decision being asked for. The order is deliberate and it is the reverse of how most reports are written.

It is not a summary in the usual sense. A summary is loyal to the shape of the original document; a briefing is loyal to the reader’s decision, and will happily put something from page 31 at the top and leave out three chapters entirely. It is also not a one-pager, which sells an offer to a buyer. A briefing informs a judgement, and it is as often internal as it is external.

When you need one

You need one when a long document has been produced, has been paid for, and has not been read by the person it was produced for. That is the ordinary case. You need one when a board, a bank, a funder or a regulator has to act on something and the evidence currently sits in an engineer’s report or a consultant’s deck. And you need one when you are asking for money and the request is currently buried in the middle of something else.

You do not need one if nothing is being asked for and the long document simply has to exist in a shorter form as well. That is report to executive summary, a narrower and cheaper job: the same forty pages brought down to two without losing the finding, in the original’s own order. If the long report is itself badly ordered and you intend people to read it, fixing its structure may be the better spend.

What goes in it

A briefing is usually distilled from a document that already exists — a technical report, an audit, a feasibility study, a year of monthly reporting. Occasionally it is assembled from several. Either way the two pages hold five things.

• The finding. One paragraph at the top, stated as a conclusion rather than as a subject. Not “this report examines the packaging line”, but what the report concluded about it.
• What it means here. The consequence for this reader and this business, in their terms: cost, risk, timing, obligation. This is the part the original document almost never contains.
• The evidence. Three or four facts, each traceable to a page number in the source, so a sceptical reader can check one and stop worrying about the rest.
• The options. What could be done, including doing nothing, with what each involves. Doing nothing is an option and it is dishonest to leave it out.
• The ask. The decision required, from whom, by when. A briefing that ends without one is a summary wearing a better title.

What you get

The briefing. Two pages, in an editable document, written to be read on paper in a meeting and on a phone the night before one. Headed, so a reader who takes only the first paragraph still takes the right thing away.

The source map. A short list tying each claim in the briefing to its page in the original, for the reader who asks where a number came from and for whoever has to defend it.

The spoken version. Half a page: what to say if you are given three minutes to introduce it before the discussion starts.

A worked example

An illustration. An 18-person food manufacturer in Ontario commissions a 46-page third-party audit of its packaging line. The report is thorough, organised by equipment, and its most important sentence sits on page 29. The owner needs the two other shareholders and the bank to agree to a capital purchase, and has already sent the full report twice with nothing coming back.

The briefing opens with the finding: the sealing unit will not hold tolerance through another peak season, and the audit says so. The second paragraph gives what that means in terms the shareholders think in — a recall risk, a fortnight of lost production if it fails in October, and the fact that the current unit can no longer be parted. Three facts follow, each with a page reference. Then three options: replace now, replace after peak, or run it and hold a contingency. Each gets two lines, including what the audit says about the odds of each holding. The ask is a decision at the next shareholders’ meeting on a quoted replacement, with a date after which the lead time makes the second option impossible. The full report goes as an appendix, and this time it is read, because someone now knows which page to turn to.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Who reads it, what they have to decide, and what happens if they decide nothing. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Agreed against the length of the source material before anything starts.
3. The source documents. Everything the briefing may draw on, plus a name I can ask questions of when the original is ambiguous, which it usually is in one or two places.
4. The finding, in one paragraph. Sent for approval on its own before the rest is written, because if the top paragraph is wrong nothing below it can be right.
5. The draft. Within five working days of that approval, with the source map attached.
6. One round of changes. Ideally after you have shown it to one person who resembles the real reader.

Seven to ten working days from first call to final document is typical for one briefing from one source.

What it costs

Executive briefings are not one of the published bands on the pricing page, so the price is fixed in writing in CAD after the half-hour call. It depends on how long the source material is, how technical it is, and whether one document or several have to be reconciled. A briefing drawn from a single clear report is the simplest and least expensive version.

What happens next

If the same finding also has to reach staff rather than a board, the version they will read and believe is a different document with a different tone. If the underlying work is strong enough to be argued publicly, a white paper is the form it takes outside the business. And if the evidence is your own data rather than someone else’s, publishing it as an industry report earns mentions a briefing never will. None of that is assumed. The briefing is a complete piece of work on its own, and once the decision has been taken the job is done.