Short memos whose first lines state the decision needed, the recommendation, and the main risk get read as written by executives with no time, while longer rival papers get skimmed.
An example
Two proposals for the same capital sat before the board of a private-equity-backed facilities services company: a fleet of new service vans and a scheduling system for its technicians. The operations team sent a 48-slide deck. The chief financial officer, who backed the scheduling system, sent one page. Its first three lines said what the board was being asked to approve, $3.2 million for the system; what she recommended, approval; and the main risk, that technicians would resist the new routes for the first two months. The rest of the page gave the payback, the alternatives considered, and how the risk would be handled, with the full model attached. At the meeting, two directors had written notes in her margins. Neither had opened the deck past its summary slide. The board approved the system and asked operations for a shorter case on the vans.
Why it works
Senior attention is the scarcest resource in most decisions. A board pack or an inbox holds more than anyone can read, so documents compete for the reader's time, and the one that delivers the decision, the recommendation, and the risk in its first lines gets read as written. The memo looks better because the reader understands it and sees its weak point already handled, and it is easier to approve because the reader knows exactly what they are agreeing to. It depends on substance behind the page. A short memo with nothing under it gets found out.
The thinking behind it
Herbert A. Simon In Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World (1971), Simon argues that "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention," and that most of the cost of information falls on its recipient. A 48-slide deck pushes that cost onto directors, who pay it by skimming. A page that puts the decision, the recommendation, and the risk first spends their attention where it counts, which is why the shorter paper was the one read and annotated.
When it fits
Written decisions that go to busy people are its home: boards, investment committees, executive teams, budget reviews. You need a clear recommendation, the discipline to state it plainly, and supporting analysis that can sit in an appendix. It is weaker where the decision-makers want to be walked through a case in person.
How to use it well
Write the first three lines before anything else: the decision you are asking for, your recommendation, and the main risk. If you cannot write them, the proposal is not ready.
- Keep the body to a page: why, the options considered, the costs, how the risk will be handled.
- Put the full analysis in an attachment and say where each figure comes from.
- Use the reader's terms and units, and cut anything that only shows effort.
- Read it as a director would, in two minutes between meetings, and fix what is unclear.
State the main risk honestly in the opening. A reader who finds it buried later stops trusting the page.
What it costs and where it backfires
A short memo exposes its logic, with nowhere to hide a weak link, which is good discipline and an easy target for critics. Some readers equate length with rigor and may think the page shows too little work. Writing short takes longer than writing long. Every material fact has to stay within reach. A page that gets its brevity by leaving out a risk or a cost the readers are entitled to know is concealment, and the attachment will not excuse it.
When it is used on you
Read the attachment behind a rival's winning one-page memo and check that the page reflects it. Write your own case to the same standard. If the short version left out something material, put that fact on one page in front of the same readers.