For everything you write you need to understand how your reader will read it.
Some things are read closely, word by word. Students can expect this for their essays. You can’t expect this for anything you write that has more than two paragraphs.
Others are skimmed, with readers only reading the first sentence of paragraphs. If the document has been well-written they will get enough from these sentences to understand the full document. If you want to try it for yourself, read a long newspaper article. You’ll find journalists write paragraphs in this way.
And most documents (including board papers that support key decisions) are scanned. When a reader scans, their eyes are jumping around the document trying to find the “good bits”.
Once you accept that most everything you write is not read there are two lessons for you to learn:
- Make it easy for the reader to find the good bits (write headings that are headlines, text formatting, include charts/tables that are clear and understandable without reading the surrounding text).
- Accept the rest of the document is for the historical record and not for reading. Include what you need to include but don’t go too far since this material is unlikely to be read unless something goes wrong.
