Present the situation, including the plan of record or default decision. Before writing, get context on how your leaders view the situation by reading, asking questions, and listening to colleagues. A great situation will articulate what your leaders think more concisely, concretely, and convincingly than they have done so themselves. A bad situation, on the other hand, contradicts what leaders think they know. This is a mistake even if you are right!
Describe the obstacles that will prevent your organization from achieving its goals. These are often, but not always, people problems. Don't stop at the surface level. Explain what caused the problem, then what caused that, recursively iterating down until you hit the root cause. If you set up the complication well, you will have transformed a complex, ambiguous reality into a simple problem — one your organization can solve.
The obstacles preventing us from achieving our goal are:
The actions we’re taking today won't solve the root cause because….
If we don't address the root cause now then….
Present your solution with guiding policies and specific actions. A sign of a good policy or action is that it’s controversial. Some folks will like it, but others won’t. This is because you’re proposing new trade-offs and all trade-off decisions are difficult.
To overcome these obstacles we recommend the following policies:
In line with these policies, we recommend taking the following actions: