Landing on your feet: organizing your policy analysis
5 important questions on Landing on your feet: organizing your policy analysis
Three heuristics concerning the piratical consequences of having a client:
- You must address the issue that the client poses
- It is almost aways better to answer with uncertainty the question that was asked than to answer with certainty an easier or less important question that was not asked.
- Good analysis does not suppress uncertainty
The policy analysis process is simplified by dividing it into two major components:
- Problem analysis
- Solution analysis
Problem analysis consist of three major steps:
- Understanding the problem
- Choosing and explaining goals and constraints
- Choosing a solution method
- Higher grades + faster learning
- Never study anything twice
- 100% sure, 100% understanding
Keep in mind that an imperfect analysis delivered an hour before your client must make a decision will almost always be more valuable to your client than a perfect analysis an hour after the decision has been made. You can facilitate more effective communication with busy clients by following a few straightforward rules:
- Provide an executive summary and a table of contents for your clients to see at glance where your analysis is going.
- Headings and subheadings allow your client to move through an analysis much more quickly.
- Diagrams, graphs and tables can be very useful for illustrating, summarizing and emphasizing information.
- Keep the text focused on the logic of your analysis.
- Try to write crisp text.
If you want your advice to be influential, then you must establish the credibility if your analysis:
- Make sure that you cite your sources completely and accurately
- Flag uncertainties and ambiguities in theories, data, evidence, and predictions
- Be value overt: clearly set out the important goals and explain why you believe that they are important
The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:
- A unique study and practice tool
- Never study anything twice again
- Get the grades you hope for
- 100% sure, 100% understanding
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