[ Executive summary ]

Everyone likes an executive summary.  Good executive summaries distil the content of a longer report into the key topics or outcomes.  The executive summary helps the reader get the ‘gist’ of the document, without having to read the whole document.

Perhaps we should all just write in executive summaries.  Keep it short and to the point.  Maybe there’s no need to write the whole document. 

But of course, that’s not right.  The explanations need to be written, so that it can then be summarised.  In order to write the summary, the author needs to be very familiar with the content.