This intimate, interactive one-day seminar, aimed at high-level executives drawn from Finance, IT, Actuarial, Audit, Strategic Planning, Reinsurance, and Product Development, helps participants create reports, proposals, presentations, and other documents that are concise, well-organized, and "reader friendly." The course focuses on the lengthy communications usually presented to senior staff: everything from quarterly projections and new product proposals to status reports, and documents to A.M. Best and to insurance commissioners.
All participants are given access to our Writing Hotline for one year and to our fax and e-mail services for three months following the course.
Objectives:
- Improve the writing of Power Point presentations, financial reports, proposals, and other documents written for senior staff
- Learn techniques for organizing lengthy reports and forecasts so
that they command attention
- Enhance proposals for developing new products, negotiating with
A.M. Best, and influencing state insurance legislation
- Give impact to strategic planning presentations, loss reserve analyses,
and reports
- Develop skills at breaking up lengthy sentences and paragraphs that
make readers lose interest
- Organize meeting minutes that save time and keep readers' attention
- Update and improve key form letters within claims and underwriting
- Improve the tone and persuasiveness of all documents
- Suggest ways to improve charts, slides, tables, graphs, and statistics so that readers can focus attention on main points
Methodology: This seminar cuts through the "productivity jam" caused by documents that often require "interpretation" and that may set off time-wasting "E-Mail wars" among writers and readers. By becoming more sensitive to the attention span and schedules of top executives, participants can make all of their documents sharper and clearer, saving vast amounts of time among senior staff, preventing embarrassment, and improving morale.
Pre-Course Assignment: Two weeks before the workshop, participants are asked to submit several samples of their written documents and to fill out "The Writing Audit," a short questionnaire that pinpoints individual writing problems. Writing audits and samples help customize this course to fit each participant's needs.
Text: The Elements of Business Writing (Macmillan, 1993) by Gary Blake and Robert W. Bly.