While the narrative has the biggest impact for you and your desired outcomes, you should understand in the context of other forms of writing. Different forms have their own goal, skill, and outcome.
Each one builds on the other. Writing a narrative may require first writing in the other formats to lay the foundation.
Think of these as a hierarchy of writing capabilities. You can begin to track your own writing for your own work or business based on this spectrum.
Even if you aspire to write at the level of the “narrative,” you’ll likely need to traverse all types of writing in spectrum. However, you should avoid this common pitfall: remaining one phase and never pushing yourself “up the stack.”
Here’s the road to the narrative. As you look at it each phase, evaluate the nature and quality of your own writing:
While the process isn’t perfectly linear, the goal is to help you identify how you write, the goal, and the changes you need to make to reach the next level.
Note Taking
Far better than taking zero notes, note taking that aids comprehension and recall is a valuable skill. But because it has limited use for others besides yourself, it has limited value.
Summarization
Summarizing, such as sending an email after a meeting, improves communication. It shortens the amount of noise people need to sift through, and it helps you to elevate from recollection to comprehension. A common characteristic of summarization is shifting from partial or cryptic phrases found in note taking into full-sentences.
In fact, the best summaries of meeting notes probably fit somewhere between a single sentence and a short paragraph.
Summarization also doesn’t have to be after a meeting. Sometimes the best summarization is before a meeting. So much time is often wasted explaining the purpose of the meeting, when really the meeting should be spent taking that common base knowledge and working together to resolve problems or action plans.
Documentation
This is more intentional and rigorous than note taking. It’s also where the bulk of the writing and communication is to create a more open and transparent business, while also increasing your own mastery of a topic.
Documentation sounds dry, and often it’s because it’s poorly written: blocks of unreadable text, poor context, bad navigation or UI.
However, for open source projects, documentation can make the difference between a popular project and one that fades away. Without clear, accessible documentation, new developers have a harder time on-boarding.
As another example, organizations that are dynamic or remote will have a much harder time scaling and moving quickly if information has to be shared point-to-point rather than off of a shared and comprehensive doc.
Documentation can include:
- Standardizing operating procedures
- Capturing and organizing requirements
- Explaining complex decisions
A company with great documentation should be able to answer common questions by saying, “There a doc for that.”
Can this be overdone?
I’d say the coverage cannot be overdone: meaning, anything that matters should be documented.
The degree of documentation, could be overdone. Some people may write in a paragraph what could be stated in a sentence.
But having a place where important or commonly used information is documented, reviewed, and commented upon can make an organization more effective.
Synthesis
Good documentation covers the information.
Good synthesis comes up with recommendations.
Documentation provides facts.
Synthesis provides insights.
As much time as good documentation takes, synthesis can sometimes take more time. But it’s a major and often overlooked step in building writing muscles.
Good synthesis makes the documentation concise while coming up with insightful conclusions or drill-down into potential risk areas.
An example would be to have an executive summary which makes recommendations, identifies patterns, or spots trends based on the documented research.
It could also break-down the documentation into mental chunks.
Tactical Plan
This phase moves from an understanding and communication about a topic to writing that changes outcomes.
For example, documenting a new product requirement will eventually need to transition to a plan to build and deliver.
A common mistake is jumping right into the tactical plan without documenting. Many people want to “just do it” or make easy assumption and drive a plan.
But doing so without identifying the problems is expensive, because the tactical plan now results in others expanding energy to get something done. There can be miscommunication, or false starts.
Documentation and synthesis can reduce it.
A way to counter the “acts before you write” is to think and write faster. In this way, people aren’t saying the writing process is a bottle-neck (which it can be). But it also means building the wider culture to realize there is speed by greasing the wheels with clearer writing and planning.
Narrative
The narrative combines a holistic synthesis — understanding the past, the impact on the present, and implications for the future — with a way to move forward that is clear and concise.
This takes work, but by combining synthesis and planning upon a foundation of good data and clear thinking, it provides a reviewable document that encourages higher-levels of thinking in the organization.