Executive Summary Activites

antecendents & outcomes[Return to the Workshop Agenda.]

Goals

  1. To increase your awareness of linguistic and visual cues in workplace documents.
  2. To recognize the connection between cues and outcomes in executive summaries.
  3. To increase your understanding of content and organizational structure cues in successful executive summaries.
  4. To increase your understanding of the qualities of evidence in the content of successful executive summaries.

Individual Activities (5 minutes)

1. Read the following report.

Class Discussion Activities (15 minutes)

1. Answer the following questions about the rhetorical context of this Oracle report (Purpose; Audience):

  • Who is the writer? What is his/her organizational role?
  • What’s the bottom-line message?
  • What is the relationship of the audience to the writer (power difference, value difference, social distance)?
  • What is the relationship of the audience to the message (knowledge level, sensitivity)?
  • What are the ideal reader consequences after this document is delivered?
  • What are the ideal writer consequences after this document is delivered?

2. Answer the following questions about the content and organizational cues that will influence the consequences of delivering the executive summary for the Oracle report.

  • What is the rhetorical purpose for each of the 9 sentences?
  • What comes first — problem or solution? Is that choice effective?
  • How much of the executive summary deals with establishing the potential customer’s problems? the proposed solution? Is that effective?
  • Why is the content about the problem persuasive — or not? (see 6 qualities of evidence or watch the video-tutorial on persuasive prose)
  • Why is the content about the solution persuasive — or not?
  • What cues work well?

3. Answer the following questions about the rhetorical context of the executive summaries for MSA project reports (Purpose; Audience):

  • Who is the writer? What is his/her organizational role?
  • What’s the bottom-line message?
  • What is the relationship of the audience to the writer (power difference, value difference, social distance)?
  • What is the relationship of the audience to the message (knowledge level, sensitivity)?
  • What are the ideal reader consequences after this document is delivered?
  • What are the ideal writer consequences after this document is delivered?

Group Activity (10 minutes)

1. Read the three sample executive summaries for MSA project reports.

2. Answer the following questions about the content and organization cues that will influence the consequences of delivering the MSA executive summaries.

  • What comes first — problem or solution? Is that choice effective?
  • How much of the executive summary deals with establishing the potential customer’s problems? the proposed solution? Is that effective?
  • Why is the content about the problem persuasive — or not?
  • Why is the content about the solution persuasive — or not?
  • What cues work well?

Class Discussion Activity (10 minutes)

1. Share your evaluation of the sample MSA executive summaries.

Group Activity (20 minutes)

1. Create an executive summary for the following white paper.

2. Share your draft in the comments section below.

Class Discussion Activity (10 minutes)

1. Defend your group’s content/organizational structure choices.

[If you want to compare your choices to those in the original, you can view a copy of the report with the executive summary.]

[Return to the Workshop Agenda.]