Can Do Writing™: The Proven Ten-Step System for Fast and Effective Business Writing

Skillset: Analysis

If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there.

—Yogi Berra

With the Can Do Writing system, you analyze your writing situation before you commit to the hard work of composing the draft and editing.

Analysis has four steps. First, you analyze purpose and audience so you know the desired results and the information needed to get those results. Second, you write a five-part purpose statement to focus your efforts and then focus the reader. Third, you select the facts your audience needs. Fourth, you organize your points in a sentence outline, turning facts into useful information.

These steps build on each other. In this skillset, we teach Steps 1 and 2, then practice with a business case study. Then we teach Steps 3 and 4, pausing again to practice all four steps with another case study.

You can skip analysis for only two reasons. If you are a genius like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, you do not need systematic analysis, nor do you need to read this book. Also, you don't need systematic analysis if your document is a fill-in-the-blank template designed to capture data, not ideas—like a bank loan application. The bank did all the analysis for you by preparing the template; you just fill in the facts.

Otherwise, do not skip analysis. In our experience working with professionals, more than 90 percent of all ineffective documents fail because the author either skipped or took shortcuts in analysis.

Your analysis produces a sentence outline—the blueprint for your ...