Recently, I wrote a checklist on what to put in a position paper.
I unexpectedly hit a raw nerve with some. There are quite a few who think the idea of reading through 27 pages, single spacing, in font 10 on Friday evening is all part of the course for any official.
Given so much time is devoted to preparing positions in many organisations, it may well be useful to share some ideas to make the whole process a lot less time and resource consuming. My own guestimate is that most organisations, both for and not for profit, spend a lot more time on preparing positions than any single item of work.
A checklist to draft a position paper
- Have a clear position. If you don’t have a clear position, and your colleagues/members are not aligned, there is no amount of creative writing that’s going to get around that.
- If you can’t get alignment, that’s easy, stop work until they come to a common agreement.
- It is useful that the people working on the common position have a good idea of what the issue is, they have some expertise on the issue, and they have the necessary time to devote to working on the position. It can be painful to see debutantes working on a complex matter that they know little about.
- If you are dealing with a situation like that, add at least 50% longer to your estimated delivery time.
- Don’t ignore internal divisions. There is no point. Get them resolved before moving on.
- When you come to a common agreement, get your colleagues to write out 8-10 points they want to make.
- Anything more than 8-10 points means you are getting over 2 pages. So get them to put down their strongest 8-10 points on the issue.
- Personally, I think it makes sense to have a position for each key issue.
- For each of the 8-10 points, you need to get your colleagues to be clear on what point is, what the solution is, and what evidence exists to support this point of view.
- And, yes, you need evidence. That can be anecdotal evidence, published studies, and data. Brussels position papers seem evidence light.
- Get your colleagues, usually working in a small team, to agree on 8-10 points, plus the solutions and evidence, and hand you the draft.
- If your colleagues can’t agree, just stop work until they come to a position.
- If there is time pressure to come to a position, but your colleagues don’t want to come to an agreed position, that’s fine. It just means you don’t have a position and you can sit out the issue for the remainder of the policy/legislative debate.
- Once your colleagues have their 8-10 points written out, sit down and draft it up into a position paper.
- I find it useful to draft with a good example and template next to you for inspiration and reference.
- First, have a political sanity check. Do the points amount to “Just Say No” to any initiative, without any credible evidence. Check the quality of the evidence.
- If your colleagues are channelling the language of ‘No Surrender, and presenting no evidence, flag this to your colleagues, and check if you have one of the early drafts.
- Go ahead and sit down for 4 hours and draft the position paper in two pages of crisp and persuasive plain English, text.
- Then, leave it for a day, and 48 hours later, edit the text. Set aside 4 hours in your agenda to check the evidence sources.
- Hand it back to your colleagues, and check if there are any errors of understanding. If there are, correct them.
- Then hand the text back to them.
- Don’t be surprised if about now, your colleagues reveal that they don’t actually agree with the text because it does not reflect their opinion. This is usually an indication that 1 – no clear common position existed in the first place.
- It helps if you don’t spend too much time on positions that are never going to land. It makes sense to spend more time on those positions that are going to have some influence. I was recently told of a case where a lot of time is being spent working on an issue that everything working on the issue has no chance of landing. The decision has already been taken.
- When you prepare a position paper, don’t draft a text that is just self-pleasing, and all that you are really doing is preparing some words to get warm around the warm glow of nothingness.
- After 25 more years in Brussels, it is clear that there are very new issues that come up. That being the case, you can have a filing cabinet full of agreed positions ready to go, pre-prepared, for when the window of opportunity opened up.
Some of the upsides
If you follow this process, you don’t have to sit through endless hours of online calls/meetings. It will cut your investment steering a text through endless hours of internal dialogue, often taking up the equivalent of 3-4 weeks, to 48 hours.
Your role gets shifted to helping clarify any questions for colleagues, receiving an agreed position from them, tidying it up, and getting it a plain English text signed off.
With the weeks you have gained, you could spend it on actually advocating for your position.
I would add:
– Think about solutions to a problem rather than focusing of what you don’t like. Policy makers want and seek solutions. 90% of the Brussels’ position papers only say what is bad, but do not offer constructive solutions.
– Offer new insights and information that underpin your argument. Very few position papers offer interesting and valuable new insights.
– Prepare a one-pager with summaries for each position, so readers get an idea within 60 seconds. If they want to dig deeper, provide details on the following pages.