- Have you produced a comprehensive, high-readability strategy document?
- Have you produced writer’s guides – based on the above – for each major section or Schedule?
- Have you shown these to several of the writers to ensure they are
user-friendly from their perspective?
- Have you held a collective briefing session i.e. between the strategist, one or two other key participants in the strategy workshops, and the section authors i.e. to verbally explain the strategy and how it underpins or influences their sections?
- Have you returned to each section author, individually, following this initial collective briefing, to ensure they understand and can follow their respective writing guide? And that they have aligned the content of their writing guide with their section content plan?
- Does any section author feel he or she needs more supporting information that they need help to obtain?
IMPORTANT: If the preceding steps are not followed, before each section author puts pen to paper, you greatly risk the standard default position: Some writers producing thinly-disguised “brochureware” and others producing what comes across as cut-and-pastes from a product or procedures manual.
