Sum Up

Near the end of the proposal, the client announced that their “recommendation” of a page limit for each technical section had transmogrified to a hard cap. Yikes.

As the writers hyper-ventilated or banged their heads on their desks, I took every section and cut. And cut.

Flowery introductions? Out.

Repeats of content found in other sections? Out.

Long, thorough explanations? Out.

Promises of good behaviour unsubstantiated by specifics? Out.

Content-free graphics? Out.

Content that answered an implied question? Out. RTQ/ATQ.

Or, in the words of one family member who is just a little impatient with long-winded explanations:

Sum up.

In the background, of course, there was a full-court press on to persuade the client to reverse this decision as coming too late in the process and as unreasonable besides, given the detail they’d asked for.

But by the time that decision had been taken, every person on our team agreed that we preferred the lean, mean proposal-machine versions to the originals that had, like Topsy, just growed. We added back a few things that were just too good to lose, and carried on, much leaner and definitely feeling meaner.

It’s not a best practice to write whatever you want and then pretend you’re being forced to cut it, but it’s an interesting thought experiment. In an environment where every risk-mitigation impulse and every document review adds content and length — details, context, examples, caveats, kudos, explanations, experience, achievements, lessons learned, background, words words words — what would it look like if you really had to sum up? And would it be easier to mark?