Staff Training:
Writing for Results Custom On-Site Workshops

Workshops on Briefing Notes
and Briefing Books

Staff at all levels require effective writing skills in order to thrive in today's work world. Effective writing skills are particularly important in our environment of information overload. Nowhere is the need more critical than in writing briefing notes, briefing books, memos and letters for senior executives.

For information about publicly scheduled briefing notes
workshops in Ottawa, visit WritingForResults.org.

A Writing For Results custom workshop is a small investment that will repay you many times over as your employees gain access to a wide range of techniques for effective writing at an advanced level. For an overview of the benefits of effective writing, click here.

Get the most out of your training budget. If you would like more information about how our briefing notes workshops can help your organization, please do not hesitate to contact us. If you would like learn about the book that is the foundation of our workshops, click here.

We do more than just train your staff in format and style. We train your staff in the thinking skills required to write effective briefing material.

Writing for Results briefing notes workshops take a comprehensive and personalized approach to training, featuring:

• consultations in advance to assess your corporate objectives for holding a briefing notes workshop;
  
  
• a review of work samples in advance to assess participants' individual needs;
  
  
• custom tailoring of the workshop's content and exercises to meet corporate and individual requirements;
  
  
• a holistic approach to writing birefing notes that uses a unique step-by-step model (see chart above);
  
  
• extensive hands-on practice and feedback during the workshop; and
  
  
• personal feedback on a post-workshop writing exercise that embodies the skills covered.

To provide ongoing support to participants, we provide a 400-page reference manual that offers detailed guidance on the skills covered and over 260 templates to ease the task of preparing briefing notes, briefing books, memos and letters.

For details on how we deliver our training workshops, click here. Please don't hesitate to contact us to learn how we can design a program that is best suited to your needs.

The chart above outlines the strategy we take in developing writing skills. Our briefing notes workshops start with effective planning. This means laying the foundation that is essential for effective communication, specifically:

• defining a practical and productive objective for your message;
  
  
• identifying the optimal audience that will best serve achievement of your objective;
  
  
• identifying the authority or authorities needed to sign off on the message;
  
• identifying barriers and competition that could prevent you from achieving your objective with the audience you have chosen; and
  
• setting time frames for preparing and delivering the message.

Once you have your plan in hand, effective writing requires that you assemble effective content. Our briefing notes workshops teach you techniques for:

• ensuring that the content is relevant to your objective, audience and authority (and that it is in compliance with the time frames you are working with);
  
  
• deciding when short and to the point is sufficient, and when you need to elaborate with details;
  
  
• ensuring that the content is made of substance, not froth;
  
  
• making appropriate use of of facts, arguments and opinions; and
  
  
• understanding the impacts of expressing your ideas in either positive or negative terms.

Next – surprisingly perhaps – you must decide upon the optimal medium for delivering what you have to say:

• Some messages are best delivered through the spoken word.
  
  
• Some messages are best delivered in writing.
  
  
• And some messages are best delivered through a combination of oral and written media.

Finally, if you have chosen a written medium of communication, you must prepare the message itself. Our briefing notes writing workshops provide you with techniques for:

• organizing the content in a manner that suits your objective and your audience;
  
  
• developing or selecting an appropriate format for the content to make the organization structure visible to the audience;
  
  
• refining the style to increase ease of reading;
  
  
• editing the grammar; and
  
  
• adding finishing touches to the message.

Some might argue with the order in which those tasks take place, and those arguments can have merit in some situations. But no one can dispute that those tasks must be carried out at some point in the course of effective writing. Writing for Results briefing notes writing workshops will give your staff the insight and techniques needed to perform those tasks effectively and efficiently.

For more information about Writing for Results briefing notes writing workshops, please don't hesitate to contact us. Make the most of your training investment.