Briefing Note Writing and

Reviewing for Leaders

Diagnose problems and communicate solutions

This is a condensed version of Effective Briefing Note Writing for managers and reviewers with limited time. It gives reviewers a common vocabulary and approach with writers, so they can work together toward a quality end product.

Eliminate the unintentional back-and-forth that’s created by differing perspectives, which can be frustrating and time consuming for everyone.

Workshop details

We customize our workshops to your organization, team, documents, templates, and style guides

- In-person—Half day (3.5 hours)
- Live webinar—Half day (3.5 hours)
We can also offer 1- or 2-hour sessions for high-level leadership.
Anyone who reviews or assigns briefing notes
1. We meet with you to discuss your group's challenges and goals
2. You send us a series of representative documents
3. We analyze your documents
4. We customize our course material using excerpts from your documents
5. We hold the workshop

What you’ll learn

an overview of the approach writers learn in Effective Briefing Notes
what the role of a good editor is and isn’t
an editing checklist to verify structure, analysis, wording, proofreading
quick techniques to identify and diagnose common problems
strategies to resolve repeating issues in briefing notes
giving useful feedback and communicating changes to back to writers
when to make changes yourself versus asking the writer to
using comments in Word or email versus face-to-face conversations
streamlining the organizational writing and review process
building organizational consistency

Get higher-quality drafts to reduce your workload

Identify and resolve problems quickly

Give focused, constructive feedback to build collaboration in your team

Before taking this course, it took me three full days to finalize a briefing note…After being halfway through and learning new techniques, I finished a briefing note in an hour and a half with limited editing! This course is a huge win for me and the work I do daily, thank you!”

— Federal briefing note writer

This training was presented extremely well. I have taken past BN training from other organizations that was not as effective. The activities and documents being ready to use as we moved through the workshop kept me engaged and helped to fortify the steps in proofreading.”

— Alberta Education

Great workshop, I learned a lot and having BN examples that align so well with our work made it easy to see how to apply the suggestions. This will help me greatly when reviewing BN's for team members and other teams.”

— Alberta Education

Have documents that look like this

Before (314 words)

Issue

The XX Committee (the Committee) was tasked with sourcing information that could potentially be used to strengthen Province X’s health care system, deliver better results for citizens, and deliver greater efficiencies.

Background

Over a matter of nine months, the Committee conducted research and facilitated discussion with stakeholders with expertise across the field of health-care systems.

Stakeholders involved in the Committee discussed at length how to best ensure that evidence is gathered, analyzed, and disseminated throughout the system relative to publicly funded services, technologies, structures, processes and procedures and incentives.

It should be noted that much research and analysis has been done on leading and best practices. The sources of this research and analysis were cross jurisdictional in nature, as well as in our own province.

Many possibilities were discussed. These included a “clearinghouse function” being identified or established and other structures being engaged and put into place to ensure greater coordination and application in the use of evidence.

Analysis

The Committee’s mandate is built on the platform of the ongoing and increasing need for the health system to do more to ensure that evidence is appropriately applied in order to better inform decisions about services, practices and policies and improve health outcomes in Province X.

The Committee is of the belief that the Province X Health Act should contain provisions to establish an objective, independent entity with the resources to assess and analyze health research and other relevant evidence in order to inform decisions on health services throughout the system.

The Committee agrees that as its recommendation is implemented, all necessary steps should be taken to optimize the use of existing expertise and resources, such as those residing in the health system, X Province universities, institutes, and other health agencies, as well as national research organizations.

Recommendation

It is recommended that Province X establish an arm’s-length entity to support evidence-based decision-making throughout the health system.

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After (249 words)

Issue

The XX Committee investigated how best to use health research to strengthen Province X’s health care system.

Recommendation

The Committee recommends the Province X Health Act establish an independent body to collect and analyze research, communicate findings, and inform decisions on health services.

Background

The Committee’s mandate was to analyze ways to improve Province X’s health care system, deliver better results, and increase efficiency.

The Committee worked over nine months to research the issue and consult healthcare experts. We gathered and carefully reviewed the information available nationally, internationally, and here in Province X.

There is already a solid body of research in health care, but there is currently no organization to coordinate and communicate it.

Analysis

Province X is not currently maximizing its ability to use existing research to make evidence-based decisions.

The Committee found rich opportunities to improve the health system by:

better understanding the existing body of health-related research
integrating existing research into the province’s day-to-day practices
communicating findings to policy makers to inform decision making

The Committee believes the best approach is to establish an independent body to undertake these responsibilities.

It is important this body have the necessary resources.

The advantages of establishing an independent organization

This body would:

centralize the research
draw on expertise from institutes and agencies, provincial universities, national research organizations, and within our own health care system
develop strategies to inform decisions about health care and propose ways to apply evidence to daily practices across the system