“That suggested that I should start with a review of my methodology.
The summary point is that Georgia is, overall, a lower-risk choice
than the two alternatives. I decided that that should be my ending point.
“This exercise alerted me to a potential problem so that I could anticipate
it, helped me identify my starting and ending points, and clarified
the importance of constructing my report to persuade, not merely inform.
Very useful.”
Some people write details, others write summaries. There’s no right or
wrong approach. Notice that Brad didn’t list specific risk factors; rather,
he used the model to clarify his thinking.
Get a Draft on Paper
Armed with the knowledge of where you want to begin and where you
want to end, as well as what points you want to make, you’re ready to
create a first draft. Remember not to worry about grammar, punctuation,
or word usage at this point. Your errors will be caught and corrected as
you revise.
EXERCISE 31: Get a Draft on Paper
In creating your first draft, you want to write with the organizational
structure you’ve selected in mind. Are you going to adopt Brad’s idea and
start with a PAR paragraph followed by Q&A? Or are you going to use
another structure or a combination of structures?
Remind yourself of the vocabulary that’s best to use to reach Producers,
as well as the words and phrases that are likely to speak to the
other personality types. (If you need help, see Table 1.1 on page 9.) Focus
on your starting point and get ready to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.
Once you start, don’t edit yourself, slow down, or stop until you’re
done or have run out of steam.
How’d you do? Did you get a draft on paper? Here’s Brad’s first draft:
Using proprietary stochastic simulation techniques, incorporating data
collected from numerous sources of government and other public data
information as well as data collected from interviews personally conducted
by me and my staff, we learned without question that the bottom-
line no-question absolute best choice for our new factory is