Preparing and Writing Briefing Notes

This one-day course provides the essentials for producing effective briefing notes, often referred to as memos, for either public or private sector organizations. With the techniques offered in this session, you will learn to be concise yet comprehensive in summarizing from more detailed source materials. You will also learn to use various models for structuring briefing notes.

We can either customize the course around existing templates and models your organization uses or supply you with a generic model for briefing notes, guaranteeing consistency across your group. We encourage participants to bring samples of their own documents to the class for discussion and application of the course principles.

We frequently run this course as a public session. Check the current public schedules in Ottawa and Toronto.

Who Should Attend

  • Federal public servants who must provide succinct summaries of projects, programs or specific issues to executives, such as cabinet ministers and deputy ministers
  • Specialists in private-sector organizations who must brief managers and colleagues on market strategies and product development

Course Topics
In this one-day workshop, you will learn to

  • apply a process specifically designed for writing briefing notes
  • get to the point of the issue or action
  • provide the appropriate level of detail, based on the reader’s need to know
  • use summarizing short-cuts to save time and effort
  • write effective and strategic recommendations
  • stay focused on the reader’s priorities
  • apply models for structuring briefing notes, using the standard templates in use in government departments and agencies
  • determine when to quote from sources verbatim and when to paraphrase
  • identify and correct the grammar errors

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