How a Lobbyist can make their writing useful for their client (and others)

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A lot (at least 80%) of what lobbyists write to their clients is ignored. It is put in the bin.
The words on the page are confusing, too long, and unclear.  Many pieces come across as inaccurate.
The writing is designed to suck the lifeblood from the reader.
The writing is, at best, pointless and often harmful.  Confusing writing comes across as untrustworthy.
Here are some suggestions to help make your writing stand out by being clear.
Writing
You will spend a lot of time writing to or for clients.
Standard Written Products
  1. Debate reports
  2. Issue updates
  3. Summaries of Commission proposals/EP & Council Amendments.
  4. Policy memo
  5. Position paper
  6. Strategy proposals
  7. Advisory notes
Below, I will use the term  ‘notes’.
Your Reader

The intended reader is busy. They don’t have time or headspace to wade through your dense notes.

They are not always an EU expert or a specific issue expert.  The same goes for their colleagues.
And most are not obsessed with the latest news about officials or politicians who are unknown outside Euro-Brussels.
This may be hard for some of you; most people are not that interested in the operations of the EU. They are not paying you to know the deep mysteries of the EU.
They will be busy people with a rich hinterland outside of EuroBrussels and likely have a problem they want your help solving. That’s it.
When your wiring is unclear, dense, or too long, it is binned. Your good suggestions are lost, and you’ll have wasted your time and, more importantly, your client’s time.
Leaky City
Presume that whatever you send out in writing will be made public someday. The leaks often come from within,
Not a natural talent
I know three lobbyists who are naturally talented clear writers.  For the rest, the skills needed can be learned.
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Rules of thumb for good policy writing
Here are some general rules of thumb for producing good policy writing that your client will understand and act on.
I have produced more specific guidance for my colleagues in a series of SOPs, templates, and examples for the standard written products.
Clear writing is still the most effective technique for communicating effectively with the reader.
I realise that many people don’t like reading at work or at home, which makes your job more challenging.
Attention spans may be dropping. This forces you to make your notes clearer.
Many prefer PowerPoint synapse frying. There is no better tool to remove deep focus, thought, and serious consideration from the equation. Peering at font five text from a distance has not yet brought sudden clarity to me.
Notes allow you to share ideas that are important to your clients. They help them make informed decisions.
Most policy writing does not follow the recommendations that follow. The lobbyist, by accident or design, loses the reader. You can stop this from happening.
  1. Work out what the reader needs to know
It is likely 1 to 3 things. They don’t need to know every aspect of a proposal, just the relevant parts.
In your notes, you need to ditch anything else that is superfluous.
In an EP or Council debate, this means you can exclude 95% of what’s not of direct interest to your client. Your client is not interested that 3 MEPs raised support for a point of no interest to them.
I doubt that your client cares that the AFD MEP raised their clarion call that Climate Change is a deep-state hoax or that horoscopes should be used for EU policymaking.
If a Commissioner gives a 45-minute speech and mentions your client’s issue only once, the remaining 44 minutes will likely be unimportant to the client.
In any proposal, there will be around 50 things that interest somebody. You are not writing for ‘somebody’.
If one person is interested in all 50 things, it is a sign that they will influence nothing.  You need to help them focus on the vital few things that will make a difference. If they insist, produce a note with the top 3 things at the start and an Annex with the remaining 47. If they want to work on all 50, it is a signal that you have lost before you even began
Many lobbyists opt for “tell them everything” school. You will bury only the 1-3 essential things in a swamp of verbiage. The reader will miss what is important.
If you think the reader has an unnatural curiosity, why not add an annexe with the other 47 points mentioned in the proposal?  You may strike lucky, and they’ll ask you about an unrelated item in the Annexe they did their Post Doc on 30 years ago. Perhaps they will thank you because you solved their insomnia challenges on a long-haul flight.
  1. Keep the writing at the right level.
Keep the EU jargon, generalities and technicalities out.
I’ve not met many who need to know that some technical laws being adopted are delegated acts, RPS measures,  or implementing acts. I’m still shocked at this🙂
The reader wants to know if the  Commission will support or oppose them.  If not,  they want to know if this can be changed or stopped.
Keep the technical experts away. 
Practically, it means you need to lock your technical experts away. Most technical experts can write only for fellow technical experts.
If they had editorial control, a 1-page position paper would be 55 pages long, in font 11.
Could you include the technical information in an Annex? The Annex will be at least 53 pages and can accompany your  1-2 page clear position paper.
There is a time and a place for Submissions to scientific and Technical Experts. Even then, you need to check that they are clear and match what the reader needs. They usually don’t.
I have found that the best technical and scientific experts write clearly. They are just rare beasts.
3. Take the Reader from where they are

Before you do anything, answer this question: Who is your reader? Ask what they want.  Get inside the reader’s head.
Likely, they will:
  • Have limited time
  • Limited attention. Consider Miller’s law. People can hold 7, plus or minus, specific things in their minds at once.
    • Over time, that figure has got lower. It is more likely only 1-3 points.
  • They are interested in their specific issue. They don’t need to know the  ‘War and Peace’ version and why something is happening.
  • If officials and politicians don’t trust the client, mention briefly why. Don’t dwell on the unsavoury details.
  • Dealing with many other issues than just the one mentioned in your note.
This means your client (and the same applies to you):
  • Cannot notice or process everything in front of us.
  • They are not working on just a critical issue at a time.
  • Unable to focus on many things at once – even though we all do.
 Take into account:

  1. To stay focused, you need to be able to read without distractions. If you are distracted, returning to focus will take around 23 minutes. If you are interrupted by the white noise of babbling in the office or the incessant notifications, you will keep getting taken out of focus. What could have taken 15 minutes of reading will take 60 minutes.

    Reading in a quiet and familiar space will make your focus much more effortless. That excludes all open-plan offices.

  2. Focused attention takes up a lot of brain power. It is limited. The more complex the writing is to understand, the more brain power is burned. You likely have no more than four hours a day to do brain-draining, focused work a day.  Spend them wisely. Internal meetings don’t count.

    Mysteriously, a good night’s sleep will restore your brain’s ‘thinking’ serum.

  3. You can focus on similar tasks in batches.

  4. Complicated writing is hard to follow. It leads the reader’s mind to wander.

  5. Don’t multitask- task switch. You’ll end up doing everything poorly and miss important details.
If your reader is working on eight important issues, sitting in an open-plan office, tired, and fire-fighting emergencies, your writing will have to be much more straightforward to be taken up.
After 27 years, there are only a few times I’ve met people with a passionate interest in the arcane workings of the EU. And, over time, few people have time for some idealised deep focus.  Knowing that it makes sense to adapt your writing to reality.
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Some Practical Tips. What you – the writer – need to do. Think Like a Busy Reader
  1. Should they bother even reading it
If the reader has many other things to choose from, your writing becomes much less important.
There are only a few moments when your EU issue is at the top of their minds.
And the more senior someone is in an organisation, the more competition they face in where to spend their precious time.
Briefings for CEOs, Boards, and senior politicians are clear and concise. Anything unnecessary is hacked away.
  1. Busy readers read differently
Limited time and attention affect how busy people read.
They don’t read the whole document; they scan it. Please help them by guiding them through the document with clear headers and correct emphasis (bolding, italics, or underlining).
Could you keep calm on Jackson Pollack-style bolding, which has no rhyme or reason? I’ve seen more than a few notes that bear an uncanny resemblance to what happened when I foolishly tried a Pampers substitute on my babies.
Put the essence of the issue and solution at the start.
The leading sentence of each new section or paragraph needs to orient the reader and let them know what’s coming next.
Could you make sure your writing is well presented? If you drop a font 11, 8 pager in front of them, most busy readers will bin it, unopened.
  1. Clear Thinking
Your ideas cannot be jumbled up. Fuzzy thinking shouts out from the page.
Unclear thinking leads to unclear writing. It is unpleasant to read. If your mind is tripping on ideas as if you had just dropped some amphetamines, what comes out will be gibberish.
Could you make sure you edit what you send?
  1. Answer Two Questions
Rodgers recommends you “continually ask yourself these two essential questions:
  1. “What is the most important information I want my readers to understand?” and
  2. “How do I make it easier for my readers to understand it?”
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Checklist
  1. Questions to ask yourself before you start writing
  • What’s the goal? Is it to inform, alert, call to action, or persuade?
  • Can you communicate the information better, e.g. by sending the clip where the politician mentions the point?
  • Who is Reader – who are you writing this for? Is it sent or used for internal reports?
    • What does the reader want to know after/get out of reading the note?
  • What is their level of expertise on the issue and process
  • How much time do they have to read this:
    • 2 minutes
    • 5 minutes
    • 10 minutes (rarely to never happens)
  1. Pre-Writing
  • Do you have the material you need in front of you: Debate, Report, Proposal, Amendments
  • Make a note of the key points the reader wants to know.
  • Note in the material where those points come up. For example, in the debate at minute 57:01, MEP Y mentioned the issue.
  • Make sure to note any points in the material that are not clear.
  • Clarify any points you are unclear about before writing. For example, you can check with the MEP’s office to understand what they meant or check the live transcript.
  • If time is pressing, mention that clarity is lacking and you are checking and will update.
  1. Writing
  • You must set aside the right amount of time to do the first draft in one go.
  • You are free from any distractions.
  • You replace EU jargon and jargon with plain English.
  • You focus on the essence and core 1-3 points.
  • You’ll have time to edit—a key sanity tool to see that your words make sense.
  1. To Check  Before Sending
  • Have you summarised the essence at the start?
  • Free of jargon.
  • The right length for the time the reader has to digest it.
  • Guided the reader through with suitable headings and emphasis.
  • Is it:
    • Clear?
    • Accurate?
    •  Honest?
  • Focuses on 1-3 key things.
  • Highlighted actions they need to take.
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Challenges for the Writer
It is not easy to write useful notes.   I think you need:
  1. You need time and energy.
I doubt I can do 4 hours a day of deep, focused work, even from the quiet of my home office. That is around 2-3 good notes a day, max.
  1. Understand what you are writing about.
Some of what you are writing about will require some genuine expertise. It is not Chat AI-generated expertise—no doctorate from YouTube University.
  1. Quiet
Focused work can’t be done in white noise zones of idle banter, phone alerts, and interruptions.
  1. A desire to provide clarity.
I think you need to want to provide clarity to the reader. You want to make their task of reading your writing as easy, pleasant, and valuable as possible. Your writing may not always pass on good news, but it must be clear.
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Clear writing is harder to produce than complex, confusing, or long writing, which may explain its rarity.
Clear writing helps the reader understand where they are and what actions they can take.
Until telepathy, with translation, becomes more common, writing will be the best way for lobbyists to communicate effectively with their clients, officials, and politicians.
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From Writing for Busy People
THE RULES OF “LESS IS MORE”
Rule 1: Use Fewer Words
Rule 2: Include Fewer Ideas
Rule 3: Make Fewer Requests
THE RULES OF READABLE WRITING
Rule 1: Use Short and Common Words
Rule 2: Write Straightforward Sentences. Write so that readers can understand the meaning of a sentence after a single read-through.
Rule 3: Write Shorter Sentences
THE RULES OF WELL-DESIGNED WRITING
Rule 1: Make Key Information Immediately Visible
Rule 2: Separate Distinct Ideas
Rule 3: Place Related Ideas Together
Rule 4: Order Ideas by Priority
Rule 5: Include Headings
Rule 6: Consider Using Visuals
THE RULES OF EFFECTIVE FORMATTING
Rule 1: Match Formatting to Readers’ Expectations. ALL CAPS don’t work.
Rule 2: Highlight, Bold, or Underline the Most Important Ideas
Rule 3: Limit Your Formatting
Fifth Principle: Tell Readers Why They Should Care
Rodgers notes “Most of us are not very good at imagining the world from someone else’s perspective… were terrible at getting into the mindset of the listeners, and had no idea how terrible they were at it… We writers tend to be similarly terrible at taking our readers’ perspective.”
THE RULES OF PERSONALLY RELEVANT WRITING
Rule 1: Emphasize What Readers. Be clear about the Value (“So what?”) and appeal to readers’ self-interest—
Rule 2: Emphasize Which Readers Should Care (“Why me?”)
Sixth Principle: Make Responding Easy
You want the reader to pay attention to and engage with what you are saying.
THE RULES OF EASY-RESPONSE WRITING
Rule 1: Simplify the Steps Required to Act
Rule 2: Organize Key Information Needed for Action
Rule 3: Minimize the Amount of Attention Required
WHEN SHOULD COMMUNICATIONS BE SENT?
Send messages when your readers are most likely to have time and motivation to read and respond.
Send action-oriented messages close to the time when that action needs to be taken.
Recommendations
Barbara Minto, The Pyramid Principle

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