As a technical leader, you are asked to make recommendations. You are asked to brief others on options and deliver an assessment. I find myself wanting to put together multiple pages of context and detail to be sure I’m fully explaining the problem. Developing an argument that fits on a single page has a powerful effect at stripping away unnecessary details.

In a leadership position, my team would come to me with requests. We want to buy this software, or use this new technology as the basis for a project. My team was making recommendations to me as the decision maker of the department. I found it difficult to parse the what and why behind these proposals.

I would receive a recommendation that would come without enough context for what precipitated the change. The recommendation would be missing clear detail about the problem being solved. For example, I recall receiving a recommendation to buy a new issue tracking product. I was ill prepared to make a decision because the proposal didn’t clearly articulate what was motivating the recommendation or what we expected to gain from the purchase.

I have asked leaders on my team to develop more complete recommendations. I proposed a format that I described as a problem statement. The components were simple: background, problem statement, mitigating factors and options. It highlights the truism that a problem well described is much easier solved. With these elements, my leaders outlined the problem they were trying to solve separate from the background, constraints and options.

As my team got better at fleshing out the problem from the various constraints and context, the recommendations would get longer and more detailed. Technical leaders, myself included, have a propensity to include every detail. The problem statements became long and unwieldy.

I pushed to shorten these problem statements to one page. The power of one page forced a clarity of what was important. If I wasn’t compelled to learn more on one page, it probably wasn’t compelling. The push is to edit out extraneous details and distractions. One talented product manager said to me that she was surprised at the insights from the one-page exercise. She forced herself to determine what was the most important elements

Technical leaders that master the one page argument have another advantage. Very few executives will read more than one page of anything. Most of my executive bosses wouldn’t even open an attachment. When my recommendation is limited to a single page, I am much more likely to reach an executive audience.

Force yourself to get a recommendation on one page and make sure you get to the heart of the matter.