Writing High-Impact Executive Summaries

Why Should You Attend:

When writing an executive summary of research findings, there are many choices because volumes of information about most topics inundate you in a content-crazed world. And when suggesting a course of action, there are again many choices because management’s direction changes course rapidly in a volatile marketplace. For these reasons, businesspeople often ask, “What should go into an executive summary?” In business, many disparate staffers assume the task of summarizing in writing. Some are account executives writing executive summaries of their own proposals for their clients; others are junior executives briefing management on an issue by compiling useful data from numerous reports; still others are administrative assistants writing executive summaries of articles or books to save their managers reading time. Regardless of these roles, possessing the ability to summarize effectively can make a significant difference in your career.

In this webinar, participants will discover the keys to guiding managers, teammates, clients, and vendors through complex content clearly, succinctly, and powerfully. It will enable you to employ a practical process for creating and critiquing memorable, results-driven executive summaries. This interactive session will allow time to answer questions about executive summary issues you encounter regularly. This webinar is for any managerial, administrative, or technical professionals charged with writing summaries of lengthy reports, proposals, and white papers for their managers and steering committees at the highest level of their organizations.

Learning Objectives:

• Approach the writing situation with a clear and useful strategy.

• Fuse the purpose of the summary with the issues that matter to your audience.

• Sort ideas to clarify key points.

• Craft paragraphs that reinforce the intent of the executive summary.

• Edit language to move the reader to action.

Areas Covered in the Webinar:

• Four power points of executive summaries

• Revising and editing summaries based on the business context

• Hitting high notes through solid structure

• Getting to the point by eliminating verbiage

• Using lists to capture essential supporting ideas

Who Will Benefit:

• Accounting professionals
• Banking managers
• Business forecasters
• Economic advisors
• Executive consultants
• Information technology experts
• Pharmaceutical representatives
• Retail specialists
• Risk analysts

Phil Vassallo
Consultant, Philip Vassallo

Philip Vassallo, Ed.D., has designed, delivered, and supervised communication training programs for more than 20,000 executive, managerial, supervisory, administrative, and technical professionals internationally over the past three decades. Dr. Vassallo is the author of the books How to Write Fast Under Pressure, The Art of E-Mail Writing, and The Art of On-the-Job Writing. He has edited major reports for the US government, City of New York, and the corporate world. He also writes the blog Words on the Line, which offers practical tips for developing writers. He has taught internationally, currently as a faculty member of the Beijing International MBA program.

Topic Background:

Management demands that the executive summary live up to its name. So the expectation is clear: tell me as thoroughly as possible without wasting a word only the information important to me so that I can decide on whatever you expect of me. “Millions of dollars are at stake,” a client for a major pharmaceutical company recently said. “All the logic and due diligence I put into the proposal are useless unless I can move the CEO to act on the strength of the executive summary alone.”

Writing executive summaries requires the writer to fulfill two objectives: understand management’s objectives for reading the executive summary, and demonstrate content mastery of the original document by including and excluding information based on those reader’s objectives. Achieving these objectives means that executive summary writing is as much a reading assignment as it is a writing assignment; however, we read and write not for what interests us but for what interests the executive reading the summary.

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