I had a very interesting comment from a friend via Facebook to my blog. I thought I’d share it with you because it brings up a neat perspective and enables me to clarify an important point.
This comment is for my blog post yesterday announcing the new title to my workbook/CD “Executive Summary Secrets” coming out next week:
…you are doing it, so this is going to be wonderful work.
As I have understood, Executive Summary Secrets does mean there is some readymade stuff and they are going to be served for empirics and non-empirics which be a tool for winning business contracts. Here the reader always expects some sort of absolute solution.
Let me just share with you this point through a different perspective which we could drive towards an analytical approach.
The television channel AXN recently transmitted few episodes of the serial Secrets of magic revealed. They showed us the secrets of various unbelievable tricks, more particularly, magicians bringing out few supermodels of Playboy from an empty box and so on. All these days, it was a magic show for all of us and now it is nothing but an organized play.
When the secrets of the magic show were revealed, all the parameters were constants/same. This means, models came from the same box, and performance was done on the same stage where it was earlier accepted as a magic show. Hence, there was no better way to bring out the models from the box than the way it was revealed. So the title with the word secret was accepted by the audience.
But, in business, the parameters would never be the same always. As the weeping philosopher of Greek says, you can never step into the same river twice, so in business.
If we go thru the “OUTLIERS” of Mr. Malcolm Gladwel, Published by Little, Brown, and Co., he has wonderfully shown how the environment around us would influence our success and results.
I think you can certainly bring out better stuff, “an analytical expression or a formula of executive summary” which works everywhere and every time.”
Here is my response:
“Very interesting point. Indeed, there are no absolute solutions and it may not work for EVERY single case – but what I have come up with is adaptable to a huge variety of cases – certainly every single case I have encountered over the course of my career, with only one exception I have ever heard about – and the cases when the RFP is highly prescriptive so you have no wiggle room.
The analytics of the approach goes not in the basic structure of the formula but inside the formula. As in – there are 6 parts in my formula but then there is also the thought process that I provide (with the framework of questions and the rationale behind it) that enables you to adapt this formula to each scenario. It is NOT the readymade stuff because even within the same company you cannot recycle the same proposal material over and over again and expect to win.
What having a formula does is it takes the guesswork out of the thought process you must go through each time – it makes it clear, straightforward, and repeatable – and therefore something you can master and perfect. It greatly speeds up your work, and if one learns my approach, and applies it, they will have a very PREDICTABLE success rate.
I have seen too many people wander in the dark and agonize over writing executive summaries but it will no longer be the case after my workbook/CD are out. I am very excited.”
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