Here’s a general rule we like to live by at CUP:
No matter how great your numbers are, if you can’t get anyone to read your feasibility study, then your project isn’t feasible. Full stop.
It’s a paradox, yes. A feasibility study should not inject itself into the feasibility process. It is supposed to be cold and impartial. The numbers and the analysis should speak for themselves. But we know that’s not the case now, don’t we?
Whether we like to admit it or not, planning isn’t a purely rational and comprehensive excercise because people aren’t solely rational and comprehensive. In this day and age it’s therefore necessary to engineer our documents in such a way that they’re understandable, enjoyable and easy to read.
To some planners that may sound shallow and glib, but it’s not. Those planners are likely to argue that their analysis and numbers are all that matters, nothing more.
Perhaps that was true at one time, but not so much any more.
Of course sound analysis and rigorous number-crunching are important – but they’re only part of the battle. The reason? Nowadays almost everyone’s analysis and number-crunching will be sound and rigorous. Everyone’s got Wikipedia and Google Earth and Microsoft Excel and Whatever Beta 2.0.
You’re not going to score points for sound analysis and good numbers. You’re going to score points for how you communicate not what you communicate. You’re going to score points for crafting work that advances a project an idea or a philosophy – presuming, of course, that your analysis is sound.
In other words: Your study and project is competing against every other study and project. We don’t tend to think of reports, studies and projects in those terms, but that’s the reality. Your studies and projects are competing for government and business dollars. And the way one accesses those dollars are through the attention-span of the decision-makers.
So next time you finish your study, take a second to look at it and ask yourself a very hard, very honest question:
If you hadn’t been the one to write it, would you even bother to read it? Would you bother to pick it up out of a pile? Would you even know that it existed?
3 Comments
I partially disagree — it is what AND how you communicate. So many times there are reports that have great ideas and numbers and are feasible but no one reads them because they are hard to read, sure. But also, so many times now a days with Fancy Report Doc 2.0 people make sweet looking reports that don’t say anything, they just look awesome. These are just as non-feasible plus they usually cost a whole lot to print.
Notice I did say that this presumes one’s logic and reasoning is sound. I also agree that sometimes we do see Fancy Report Doc 2.0 (a name which I love by the way) that has no degree of credibility behind it. Both is essential and too often people forget one or the other.
Capturing someones imagination is an important part of the process. Without it, your plan goes unrealized. But if you capture someones imagination without facts to back it up you become a charlatan… and divert resources from truly deserving projects.