Exercises — Chapter 37: Writing for Business and Policy

Writing is learned by writing. These exercises ask you to produce and revise business and policy text—executive summaries, one-pagers, policy briefs, board memos, elevator pitches—not to pick letters. Difficulty is marked ⭐ (warm-up) to ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (extension).

Selected solutions and rubrics: appendices/answers-to-selected.md. Where a task is open-ended, a self-assessment rubric is given here instead of an answer.

Part A — Analyze This ⭐

Read each as the time-poor decision-maker it was written for. Identify what's broken, and name the specific failure (buried recommendation, summarizing-not-recommending, hedged stakes, no ask, shrunken report, brochure-not-white-paper, wrong altitude, dishonest simplification).

A1. "This report examines our customer retention performance and presents findings and recommendations for leadership's consideration." — As the opening of an executive summary, what's missing? Could a reader decide anything from it?

A2. "The initiative is expected to deliver significant cost savings and substantial efficiency gains over the medium term." — Which words are doing no work, and what would a decision-maker need instead?

A3. "In today's fast-paced business environment, our innovative, industry-leading solution empowers organizations to unlock unprecedented value." — This is the first line of a "white paper." Why will a serious reader stop here, and what genre has it actually become?

A4. A policy brief ends: "These findings are consistent with prior literature. Further research may be warranted to explore the underlying mechanisms." — Why is this the wrong ending for a policy brief? What does the policymaker actually need from the final paragraph?

A5. A board update reads, in full: "The team shipped the new dashboard, closed 47 bugs, and migrated the analytics pipeline. Churn was 9.3%. Q4 work is being planned." — Identify the one fact a board must engage with, and explain why its placement and framing fail the board reader.

A6. An email to a VP closes: "Let me know your thoughts when you get a chance—happy to discuss whenever works for you." — What's wrong with this as the close of a document meant to drive a decision?

A7. A "one-pager" is a single page in 8-point font with the margins removed, opening with a "Background" section and a "Methodology" section. Why is this not actually a one-pager, even though it fits on one page?

A8. Spot the failures in this executive summary. Below is a short (fictional, composite) executive summary for an internal report. Find every flaw you can—buried recommendation, hedged stakes, missing ask, method-first ordering, audience mismatch—and name each one.

Executive Summary. Over the past quarter, the operations team conducted a comprehensive review of our fulfillment process in response to leadership's interest in operational efficiency. Using process-mapping techniques and time-and-motion data collected across three warehouses, the analysis identified several areas of potential improvement. A range of factors was examined, including staffing levels, software bottlenecks, and physical layout. The review found that there are opportunities to achieve meaningful efficiency gains. Detailed findings and a number of recommendations are presented in the sections that follow.

Part B — Revise This ⭐⭐

Rewrite each into the right form for its reader: lead with the recommendation, quantify the stakes, end with a dated ask. Where a number is missing, invent a plausible one and mark it [est.] so the move is visible.

B1. "We've noticed some issues with our onboarding process and think there might be an opportunity to improve customer retention if we invest in it." — Rewrite as the opening two sentences of an executive summary that leads with a recommendation and a stake.

B2. "The new vendor contract would cost more but might offer better service and reliability, which could be worth considering." — Rewrite as a recommendation-first sentence with the trade-off quantified and an ask attached.

B3. "Our analysis suggests that there may be a relationship between marketing spend and customer acquisition, and this could have implications for budget planning." — Rewrite to lead with the finding and push it to an actionable recommendation (invent a plausible number).

B4. A white-paper paragraph reads: "Customer retention is more important than ever. Our solution helps companies retain customers using advanced analytics and a powerful platform." — Rewrite it to teach something useful first, demoting the product to an honest, proportionate mention.

B5. A policy-brief paragraph reads: "A study found a correlation between after-school program attendance and improved graduation rates. This is an encouraging finding that policymakers should be aware of." — Rewrite to recommend a specific action, quantify the stakes, and stay honest about what a correlation does and doesn't show.

B6. A board memo reads: "We're making good progress on several strategic initiatives, and there are a few risks we're keeping an eye on." — Rewrite at board altitude: name the one material risk, frame it strategically, and label clearly whether the board must act.

B7. (The flagship rewrite.) Take this rambling note to an executive and turn it into a three-sentence written elevator pitch that creates motion:

Hi — I've been digging into our churn data over the past few weeks and found some patterns I think are pretty interesting. It looks like a lot of our customer losses are happening early in the customer lifecycle, around the onboarding period, rather than at renewal like we've been assuming. I built a model and the time-to-value metric came out as a strong predictor. I think this might be relevant to how we're spending our retention budget and I'd love to walk you through it sometime if you have a few minutes.

Lead with the hook, give one number for the stakes, end with a small concrete ask. This is the chapter's signature compression—make it exemplary.

B8. A line in a report reads: "It is important to note that the findings of this analysis indicate that there could potentially be significant value in the consideration of a reallocation of resources toward the early-stage customer experience." — Apply both Chapter 3 (cut the bloat, free the verb) and this chapter (lead with the recommendation). Two passes: first cut it to a clean sentence, then make it a recommendation-first sentence with a stake.

Part C — Write This ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

Produce the document the scenario calls for. Aim for publishable business/policy prose—decision-first, quantified, with a clear ask.

C1. An executive summary that stands alone. You've completed an analysis (use Dana's churn finding, or any analysis you understand): a problem, a cause, a recommended action, a cost. Write a half-page executive summary containing all five elements—situation, recommendation, justification (with numbers), cost/catch, dated next step. Then apply the standalone test: strip away the imagined report—can a reader decide from your summary alone?

C2. Compress this report into a one-pager. Below is a (fictional, composite) abbreviated report. Re-conceive it as a true one-pager for leadership using the hierarchy (recommendation → 2–3 numbers → strongest evidence → cost/risk → dated next step), demoting everything else to "available on request." Do not shrink the font—rebuild around the decision.

Quarterly Support Operations Review. Background: Customer support ticket volume has grown over the past year as the customer base expanded. Methodology: We analyzed 18,400 support tickets from the trailing four quarters, categorizing them by type, channel, and resolution time, and surveyed 1,200 customers on satisfaction. Findings: Average first-response time rose from 4 hours to 11 hours. Customer satisfaction (CSAT) fell from 84% to 71%. The largest single category of tickets (38%) was "how do I…" questions answerable by documentation that does not currently exist. Ticket volume in this category grew 60% year over year. Second-largest was billing questions (22%). Staffing grew 10% while volume grew 45%. Customers who waited more than 8 hours for a first response were 3x more likely to cancel within 90 days. The analysis controlled for customer tenure and plan tier. Additional findings on channel preferences and agent productivity are detailed in the appendix.

After you write the one-pager, list what you cut and confirm that nothing you cut would have changed the decision.

C3. Write a policy brief from a finding. You are advising a city official. Here is a finding (composite, fictional, illustrative—not a real study): "An analysis of two years of city data found that buildings without smoke-alarm inspection records had roughly twice the rate of fire-related injuries compared with inspected buildings; about 30% of rental units in the city have no inspection on record." Write a one-page policy brief: a title, a one-sentence summary, the problem (quantified), the evidence (translated, honest about correlation vs. cause), 2–3 numbered actionable recommendations with rough costs/trade-offs, and a closing. Lead with a recommendation a council member could vote on.

C4. A white-paper opening that earns authority. Pick a topic you understand well (in your field, your hobby, your work). Write the first two paragraphs of a white paper that (a) opens with the reader's real problem, (b) teaches something genuinely useful and ideally counterintuitive, and (c) if there's a "product" or solution, mentions it honestly and proportionately—not as the point. The test: would a reader value these paragraphs even if they never bought anything?

C5. A board memo. For an organization you understand (real or invented), write a board memo of under one page that (a) leads with the one strategic matter the board must engage with, (b) clearly labels what requires board action vs. what's for awareness, (c) states a material risk honestly, and (d) demotes operational detail to "see appendix." Write at governance altitude, not operational altitude.

C6. The four-altitude ladder. Take one finding (yours or Dana's) and write it at all four levels of compression: (1) the elevator pitch (3 sentences), (2) the one-pager, (3) the half-page executive summary, (4) a one-paragraph description of what the full report would contain. The content stays constant; only the altitude changes. This is the chapter's capstone exercise—the one that proves you can move fluidly up and down the ladder.

C7. Rewrite the A8 executive summary, done right. Take the flawed fulfillment-review executive summary from A8 and rewrite it as a proper standalone executive summary: lead with the recommendation, invent plausible numbers (marked [est.]) for the stakes, name a cost, end with a dated ask, and cut every sentence that merely describes the document. Aim for something a busy executive could approve from the summary alone.

Part D — Synthesis & Critical Thinking ⭐⭐⭐

D1. Translate one finding for three readers. Take this finding: "Our analysis shows that customers who reach first value within 7 days churn at 3%, versus 22% for those taking longer than 21 days." Write the same finding (a) as the opening of a policy-style brief for a non-technical executive committee (no jargon, lead with the action), (b) as a line in a board memo (strategic altitude, framed as a material lever), and (c) as a written elevator pitch to a single VP (three sentences, create motion). Notice how the reader (Chapter 2) reshapes the same fact three ways.

D2. Find the flaw. A one-pager for leadership leads with the recommendation, gives strong numbers, and ends with a clear ask—but it omits a known caveat: the churn finding is based on a model that correlates time-to-value with churn and cannot prove causation, and there's a plausible alternative explanation (high-intent customers both activate faster and stay longer for unrelated reasons). The author left it out to keep the page clean and persuasive. Critique this decision. Was the omission a legitimate compression or a dishonest simplification? What's the test, and how would you put the caveat back without wrecking the one-pager? (Connect to Chapter 38.)

D3. The compression ladder and its limit. The chapter argues the elevator pitch, one-pager, executive summary, and full report are "the same content at four altitudes." But something must change besides length as you compress—not just words dropped. In a paragraph, argue what changes qualitatively (not just quantitatively) as you move from the full report to the elevator pitch, and where the honest limit of compression is—the point past which you're no longer compressing the same content but misrepresenting it.

D4. White paper vs. brochure—the gray zone. The chapter says a white paper "earns authority by being useful enough that a reader would value it even if they bought nothing." But every white paper is published because of business interest. Where exactly is the line between a legitimate, useful white paper that happens to advance a product and a brochure with footnotes? Propose a concrete test a writer could apply to their own draft to tell which side they're on.

D5. Why the buried recommendation is so seductive. Burying the recommendation is the chapter's flagship failure, yet smart, careful writers do it constantly. In a paragraph, explain why—what makes leading with the method or the background feel safer and more natural to the writer, even though it serves the reader worse. Connect to the curse of knowledge (Chapter 2) and to writing in discovery-order rather than reader-order (Chapter 4 and Chapter 27).

Part M — Mixed Practice (Interleaved) ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

These mix this chapter with earlier ones, so you have to choose the right tool—not just apply the most recent one.

M1. (Ch 37 + Ch 27) Take Dana's churn finding and write both (a) the recommendation-first data memo to a single VP (Chapter 27's form—a few short paragraphs, method demoted) and (b) the one-pager for leadership (Chapter 37's form). Then write one sentence on how the two differ and why: same content, different reader, different compression.

M2. (Ch 37 + Ch 20) You're writing a business case to fund the onboarding redesign. Apply Chapter 20 (problem→solution→ROI, the standalone executive summary) and Chapter 37 (the one-pager compression). Write the executive summary that would sit atop the business case, then the one-pager a leader who won't read the business case would get instead. What survives in both? What's only in the longer one?

M3. (Ch 37 + Ch 4) A 30-page report puts its recommendation in the conclusion, on page 28. Apply Chapter 4's structure principles and this chapter's compression: where should the recommendation live, what belongs in a one-page summary on top, and what stays demoted in the body? Sketch the reorganized front matter (summary + section order).

M4. (Ch 37 + Ch 9) Your one-pager's single strongest piece of evidence is best shown as a chart (churn rate by time-to-first-value cohort). Decide whether the one-pager should include the chart or state the comparison in a sentence (you have one page—space is the constraint). Then write the interpretive caption (Chapter 9 discipline—the caption that says what the chart means, not what it plots) for the version that includes it.

M5. (Ch 37 + Ch 19) Write the cover email that delivers your one-pager to a busy executive. Apply Chapter 19 (specific subject line, purpose in the first sentence, one clear ask) and this chapter (the email body should itself be a near-elevator-pitch, with the one-pager attached for depth). Three or four sentences, max.

M6. (Ch 37 + Ch 28, advanced) You wrote a policy brief recommending broadband subsidies for low-income students. Now a local newspaper asks you to write a short op-ed making the public case for the same recommendation. Apply Chapter 28 (analogy, hook, jargon budget, narrative for a general audience) and contrast it with the policy brief: how does the same recommendation change when the reader shifts from a council member who will vote to a general public you're trying to persuade? Write the op-ed's opening paragraph.

Part E — Extension ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (optional; Deep Dive track)

E1. Audit a real executive summary or white paper. Find a publicly available executive summary, white paper, or policy brief (a consulting firm's white paper, a think-tank policy brief, a public company's annual-report summary, a government white paper). Audit one page: does it lead with the recommendation or bury it? Are the stakes quantified or hedged? Is there a clear ask? If it's a white paper, is it useful or a brochure? Rewrite the weakest paragraph to fix the worst failure. Report what fraction of the opening was decision-relevant versus document-describing.

E2. The whole compression chain. Take one real finding (from your work, a class, a public dataset) and produce the complete ladder, end to end, showing how each level hands off to the next: a full-length analysis outline → a half-page executive summary → a one-pager → a three-sentence elevator pitch. At each level, mark what you dropped and confirm you never dropped a decision-changing caveat. The point is to feel how the same content lives at four altitudes and where the honest floor of compression is.

E3. Policy brief with honest uncertainty. Find a real research finding with genuine uncertainty or limitations (a single study, a correlational result, a finding that conflicts with other studies). Write a one-page policy brief that recommends an action and is scrupulously honest about what the evidence does and doesn't support—translating the uncertainty into the design of the recommendation (a pilot, a phased rollout, an evaluation requirement) rather than burying it. Cite only sources you can verify (Chapter 11); never invent a statistic or a study.

Self-Assessment Rubric (for the open-ended tasks: B7, C1–C7, D-series, E-series)

Score each piece against these. Aim to satisfy all six.

The single best self-check on any business or policy document you write: could the most time-poor reader you're writing for decide from this alone—and is everything you cut something that genuinely wouldn't have changed their decision? If either answer is no, revise.