In this lesson you learn how to structure your rationale in a persuasive, logical manner and how to clearly articulate key findings from your interpretation or analysis of data.
The rationale of a memo immediately follows the recommendation and provides three to five key reasons that support the recommendation.
After reading this section of your document, your reader should …
Understand the logic behind your recommendation.
Be confident that your logic is based on facts or reasonable assumptions.
Be persuaded to agree with or approve your recommendation.
You should try to get into the habit of providing three to five rationale points for any significant recommendation. Ensuring that you have three to five rationale points forces you to separate your reasoning into narrowly focused, easily supportable elements. Such separation is important so that your reader can easily evaluate the strength of each rationale point and quickly identify the advantages of accepting your proposal.
Plain English
A rationale point is one specific reason why accepting your proposal makes sound business sense.
If after separating your reasoning into narrowly focused, clearly supportable elements, you have fewer than three reasons your recommendation should be accepted, either you have not clearly thought through all the advantages of your proposal, or the recommendation isn't very important. Keep in mind that your recommendation asks the organization to begin doing something differently than it is today. This may have ramifications throughout the company.
For example, in the national expansion recommendation cited in Lesson 6, "Making Your Recommendation or Conclusions," the marketing department will have to implement the plan, the sales department will have to sell it to customers, the manufacturing department will have to make more product, and so on. With this much at stake, you should be able to provide a number of reasons the organization should be willing to make the changes required.
If you have more than five rationale points, you need to prioritize them in order of importance, and list only the top three to five. Although you may have more than five reasons to support your recommendation, a "laundry list" of rationale points tends to detract from the importance of any one reason. Your objective in the rationale should be for your reader to consider each rationale point as meaningful by itself. Having too many points detracts from this objective.
Also, including more than five rationale points may be taking more of your reader's time than necessary. If you haven't convinced the reader to accept your recommendation after providing the three to five most important reasons to do so, additional reasons are unlikely to be any more persuasive.
In the rationale you not only must have key points to support your recommendation, but must present them in a persuasive, easy-to-read format. A good rationale contains the following elements:
A topic sentence for each point that clearly and succinctly states the information to be considered. The topic sentence of a rationale point is generally set apart from the rest of the paragraph by using italics or bold print.
Supporting data or corroborating information that demonstrates the validity of the topic sentence of each point. This corroborating information may be a chart of numbers or a brief summary of previous learning. If the supporting data take up too much room in the main document, you may wish to use a sentence or two to summarize the point, and include the complete data set as an appendix.
The rationale points listed in order of importance, from most important to least. While you may be tempted to "save the best for last," giving the most powerful and persuasive reasons first shows respect for your readers' time and their interest in quickly understanding exactly what you want to do and why you want to do it.
Tip
When you append material in your document to support key points, be sure to refer the reader to the respective appendix at the appropriate place in the main document.
Recall the example recommendation document in Lesson 3, "Framing Your Thinking," where the Acme Shampoo brand manager recommends the national expansion of a sampling program that was successful in test market. Note how each rationale poiint is supported by the appropriate data.
These rationale points support your recommendation that the sampling plan used in test market should be implemented nationally. You've given the reader several different measures of the plan, and provided the data that confirms its effectiveness. At this point, your reader should be ready to approve your recommendation.
Memos that summarize or analyze data without making a recommendation would of course not require a section providing the rationale for the recommendation. Summaries and analyses will instead generally have a section containing conclusions, as discussed in Lesson 6. This type of memo will have findings following the conclusions. Key findings are the most relevant facts that come from your analysis of data, research, or other business events. Key findings accompany conclusions in the same way that rationale points accompany recommendations.
After reading your key findings, your reader should …
Understand that your conclusions are based on facts.
Be confident that the facts you've presented are adequately supported by the data you've collected and summarized.
Be persuaded to agree with your conclusions.
The principles discussed earlier that apply to developing rationale points also apply to key findings. With that in mind, when developing your key findings you should …
Put them in order of importance, starting with the most important.
Include only those key findings that tie in directly to your conclusions. Don't include stray findings. If a finding doesn't support a meaningful conclusion, leave it out.
Start your key finding with a topic sentence, followed by the corroborating data.
Occasionally, when the findings do not require a significant amount of supporting data—that is, each finding can be encapsulated in a sentence or two without additional support—you may wish to combine the conclusions and key findings sections. Do this by stating a conclusion as the topic sentence of a paragraph, and list the findings that support that conclusion as the remainder of the paragraph. Typically, you would only combine these sections for analyses with a small number of fairly straightforward conclusions.
Plain English
A topic sentence is the first sentence of a paragraph, and states the main point. Additional sentences in the paragraph should support the point made in the topic sentence.
Suppose you're the marketing director of a small software company that is preparing to launch a desktop publishing product called Publish It and a clip art/graphics product called Imagine It. Your department recently conducted packaging communication research to confirm that the packaging communicated key messages. Your research summary concluded that the new product packaging direction communicates key messages effectively. Your key findings from the research might look something like the following.
Caution
Avoid making conclusions or stating an opinion in a finding. Findings should be statements of fact, based on the data being summarized or analyzed.
Rationale points for recommendations, or findings for summaries or analyses, are the "guts" of a memo—the factual foundation on which the recommendation or conclusions must rest. For that reason, this section of your document should clearly and concisely lay out the key facts you need the reader to know in order to understand and agree with the rest of your document.
The rationale of a document should provide three to five well-supported reasons that the recommended course of action is the right one.
Rationale points should begin with a topic sentence describing the important information, followed by supporting data that demonstrate the validity of the topic sentence.
The key findings section of a document should list the most important findings supporting your conclusions about the data or research.
Each key finding should be supported with the data that demonstrate the validity of the finding.
Both rationale points and key findings should be listed in order of importance, beginning with the most important.