Truth 30. Organizing complex projects isn’t that hard

Elaine, assistant manager of an environmental services company, was handed a challenge: a dense, disorganized, and meandering “white paper” (a report on a major issue) that dealt with an important aspect of the firm’s work, remediating polluted lakes and ponds. Her assignment: “Fix it.” Where to start?

It’s always easiest and most efficient to plan a substantial writing project in advance, before plunging into the research and actual writing. But sometimes a project just grows out of hand. At other times, you’ve already accumulated masses of information on the subject and, paradoxically, knowing so much can be paralyzing. And sometimes, like Elaine, you’re handed a half-baked document and asked to clean it up.

The step-by-step writing method that enables you to plan and follow through on a complicated writing assignment helps in a retrieval effort as well. The process is similar. Here’s how it can work—with variations, of course, according to the nature of your subject.

Clarify goals and audience—With a major project, this often demands a team approach. If you’re dealing with complicated technical information and a morass of possible content that needs to be translated for a general audience, you’ll need help from the subject experts. If you are the subject expert, you’ll find it helpful to get input from people who communicate effectively. Use team thinking to brainstorm goals in relation to audience.

In the water pollution example, the original focus of the confusing paper was to report on a regional survey the company had done to identify contaminated bodies of water. A think-tank session revealed that even some participants were unclear on basic aspects of the problem, and that many members of the target audience—government administrators, civic leaders, developers, and the general public—would have minimal understanding.

This led to a decision to refocus the paper as a “Water Pollution 101” education piece. The agreed-upon goal was to make people care about the problem, present an analysis of the roadblocks to fixing it, and promote exploration of solutions. The sub-agenda—raising the company profile as a relevant service provider—could be kept unobtrusive so the paper would be perceived as done for the common good.

Content mapping—The articulated goals and better sense of audience made it fairly easy to figure out what content would work. Agreement was quickly reached that the paper should include the following:

• History of why the problem exists

• Clear explanation of why it matters to everyone in the region, and demands attention

• Rundown of current relevant laws

• Analysis of what’s wrong with the laws

• Analysis of why little progress has been made toward fixing the problems

• Recommendations toward solutions

• Organization’s credentials, to validate its viewpoint

• Examples of successful processes and outcomes

Research and analysis—With a contents hit list in hand, the already written material was reviewed rather easily to see which sections might be used or adapted, and what was missing. The content holes were filled through research and discussion with the subject experts. Keeping the content areas in separate files, and developing each one separately, sidestepped the confusion of having to deal with so much information.

Organization—With all the pieces at hand, it was quickly agreed that it was logical to begin with “why care?”—the “what’s in it for me?” concept: If readers didn’t see the importance of the subject in the first 10 seconds, they would read no further. From there it was natural to move on to why, given the situation’s seriousness, so little progress had been made.

Next, to set the stage for making recommendations, the organization’s expertise should be established. The rest of the sequence took shape naturally. When it came to presenting an analysis of each major problem, it seemed most effective to cap each element with the recommended solution. Thus, the final sequence:

1. What defines a polluted body of water, how many there are in the region, and why it matters

2. Reasons why little has been done regionally to clean them up

3. The sponsoring organization’s credentials for addressing the problem, briefly

4. History: Where did the problem come from?

5. The relevant laws: each briefly summarized

6. Analysis of what’s not working and recommended initiatives toward solutions

7. Conclusion: Recap of what healthy ponds and lakes can mean to the region, how the organization can help, vision for the future

8. Appendix:

Three case studies of successful programs

Details on the company’s regional survey

Glossary/definitions

More detailed backgrounder on the company and its services

In sum, attack big challenges by being clear about who your audience is and what you want to accomplish…break down the elements into specific components…figure out a logic to your argument so you can identify what’s missing, as well as how to sequence your material…adjust the organization to make the best use of your material and to make the most powerful argument. Put supplementary material that might slow the flow into an appendix.

These ideas apply directly to proposal writing, reports, and other long documents.