Summarize Directly

Once you have the steps in your process sorted out, you come to what is the absolute hardest part of dealing with action ideas-stating the overall summary effect. I can't really give you a fool-proof technique for doing this, other than to say that

- The grouping must be MECE ''

- The summary must state the direct effect of carrying out the actions, worded to imply an end product.

You can then check the thinking by testing the points against each other. In the above example, if the company has the trained people, the appropriate planning system, and the handbook, it certainly should be in a position to come up with the right kinds of strategies. That, of course, is not the same thing as saying they will be able to come up with the right kinds of strategies. Nor do my two rules guarantee that you will be able to come up with the right kind of summary.

The best I can do is give you so.me before-and-after examples, and show you how I thought about them. Here is a vaguely worded one.

To improve Equity sales in the London market, we should

- Rank revenue potential of customers by area

- Decide degrees of penetration wanted in each area

- Reassign salesmen accordingly

I look at a grouping like this and say, "Okay, doing these things won't improve sales, because if I get just one additional sale I have improved sales." Then I ask, "If I rank revenue, decide penetration, reassign salesmen-I do that in order to make what happen? Or to put it differently, if I don't do it, what won't I have made happen?" And I come up with

"To improve Equity sales in the London market, we need to focus our resources on customers with the highest potential

(How do we do that?)

This is a much more interesting statement to read because it presents an idea rather than an intellectually blank assertion. The reader's mind is more ready to take in the ideas that follow because you have forced him to ask "How?", and you yourself can check that the steps stated will achieve the result.

Here's another example of vague wording:

To improve the training environment for blue collar workers in the UK

- Demonstrate to top management that Government considers work force training to be of top importance

- Establish a framework within which suppliers will develop appropriate courses

- Create upward pressure front the work force

In this case, because the sentences are complex, you need to work out the essence of what they say before you try to move up. To do that, you first isolate the real subjects of each sentence:

- Top management

- Suppliers

- Work force

Then ask yourself, why are we discussing these three subjects and no others? What characteristic do they possess in common? They all appear to be participants in the training system in the U.K.

Next, identify how each sentence says we should act on that particular participant:

- Demonstrate the importance to

- Establish a framework for

- Create pressure from

What's the same about these three types of activity? They are all incentives of a sort. With some confidence, we can now summarize to say:

To improve the training environment for blue collar workers in the U.K., we must provide the incentives that will encourage each participant in the training system to support training.

(what does that mean we would do?)

Again, we have a much more interesting statement, and one that both pulls the reader through your reasoning and permits checking for completeness.

Let me tie this whole discussion together with this final, obscurely worded example about the product development problems in a company whose consumer products have a heavy R&D content.

The issues facing Product Development

1. How to incorporate the desired features, from the corporation and the marketplace point of view, into the product development process

2. How to priorities and allocate resources between various projects

3. How to shorten development times while taking into account the requirements from the marketing people

4. How to organize and harness the R&D organization resources to meet the end points of development lead time

5. How to keep people informed (in and out of the corporation) in order to maximize coherence and strength of the product deliverables

6. How to motivate the scientists and managers into product development partnership

If we follow our normal process, step one is to state the points at their barest, so that they can be thought about more easily.

1. Develop the right products

2. Allocate the right resources

3. Do it quickly

4. Do it on time

5. Market it effectively

6. Get scientists/managers to cooperate

Step two is to identify the subgroups.

1. Identify products that will meet market requirements

-Incorporate the desired features (1)

-Meet marketing people's requirements (3b)

2. Develop them in the shortest possible time (3a)

- Allocate the right resources (2)

- Organize R&D to meet deadlines (4)

- Motivate scientist/manager cooperation (6)

3. Offer them to the market in the most compelling way (5)

Step three is to find the summary point. Ii we do these three things, what will we get? Apparently, we will get a product the market wants, before anybody else, gleaning the highest possible sales.

Before we can tie these together, we have to think back to what most business people know about product development in general. We know that there is a premium for being first to the market with a product, and that the life cycles of products are constantly shrinking, so that cutting product development time is a real priority for a company. With that as the background, I would presume the author is trying to say something like:

The major issue facing product development is whether we can organize ourselves to outperform the competition in responding to the marketplace. (What do we have to do to respond quickly and effectively?)

1. Can we identify the right products for our market?

2. Can we cut unnecessary delays in getting the product to that market?

3. Can we mount a marketing effort that will maximize sales?

By this point it must be more than obvious to you that clearly communicating action ideas is not easy. It demands hard thinking. But the alternative is really so unpleasant for the reader that you will want to make the effort to follow the steps we have been discussing: word the points as end products, distinguish the levels of abstraction, and draw the effect directly from the actions.

You need to follow a similar, but less arduous, process in drawing an inference from a set of conclusions. Here, instead of trying to visualize the effect a set of actions will achieve, you are trying to grasp the insight a set of similar kinds of statement implies.