During the PhD · Communicate like industry

Writing for decision-makers

In academia, depth signals intelligence. In a company, clarity does. The skill that gets your work acted on is the one PhD programs never teach.

5 min read · By Marc Sleiman

In industry, your analysis rarely stops with your manager. It gets summarized and passed upward, and eventually someone near the top of the organization decides whether to act on it. Being able to write and speak to that person is what gets your work used, and it is what gets you noticed. Most PhD students never practice it, because academic writing trains the opposite habits.

Who you are writing for

The “C-suite” means the chief officers at the top of an organization: the CEO, CFO, COO, chief marketing officer and so on. They and the vice presidents below them share three traits that should shape everything you write for them.

They are short on time. They see dozens of reports and decks competing for a few minutes of attention. They read to decide, not to learn: every document they open should answer “what do you want me to do?” And they are comfortable with numbers but are not economists or analysts. They understand a margin, a growth rate or a cost, but not a standard error or an instrumental variable. Translate for them; do not lecture them.

The biggest mistake: burying the answer

Academic writing builds up to the conclusion. A paper moves from the literature to the method, the data, the limitations and the findings, and arrives at a recommendation at the very end, if at all. A reader in a company who stops after the first paragraph, which most do, learns nothing.

Executive writing reverses the order. You lead with the recommendation, then give the key finding that supports it, then the financial or operational impact, then the risks and how to handle them, and finally the next steps and what you need from the reader. The method, data and robustness checks go in an appendix for anyone who wants them.

In academia, depth signals intelligence. In the boardroom, clarity does.

Lead with the answer

The pyramid principle, developed in management consulting, is the simplest way to structure this. Put your answer or recommendation at the top. Under it, give the two or three main reasons. Under each reason, put the supporting data and evidence. A reader can stop at any level and still leave with the right message.

For the opening paragraph, use the SCQA structure: the situation (what is true now), the complication (what changed or what is going wrong), the question that raises, and your answer. For example: “Our delivery fee has been $3.99 for two years. Since March, repeat orders in mid-sized cities have fallen 12%. Is the fee the cause? Our test suggests it is, and lowering it to $2.99 in those cities would pay for itself within six months.”

Then apply the elevator test. If your reader sees only the first paragraph, do they know what you want them to do? If not, rewrite it until they do.

The anatomy of an executive report

Executive summary

The most-read section, and sometimes the only one. Lead with the recommendation and the impact. Use direct, owned language: “We recommend,” not “It could be argued.”

Problem and context

Why this matters now. One page at most, and often one paragraph.

Data and analysis

The supporting evidence. It matters, but it is not the star of the document.

Options considered

Show that you evaluated alternatives, including doing nothing, and why you rejected them. This builds credibility and anticipates the first question a careful executive will ask.

Recommendation

Specific and owned: what to do, where, starting when.

Risks and mitigations

What could go wrong and how you would handle it. Naming risks yourself makes you more credible, not less.

Next steps and the ask

What decision you need, from whom and by when.

Write like someone who decides

Academic writing hedges, because overclaiming is punished in peer review. Business writing that hedges reads as uncertain or evasive. Say what you found, with appropriate confidence, and put your caveats in one clear place rather than sprinkling them through every sentence.

Charts for people who are not analysts

Use one chart per insight, not five. Give each chart a title that states the conclusion rather than the topic: “Repeat orders fell 12% after the fee increase” instead of “Repeat orders over time.” Round numbers to what matters: $3.2 million, not $3,214,882.17. Express impact in dollars or percent whenever you can. Leave out statistical jargon such as p-values and standard errors, or translate it (“we are confident the effect is real, not noise”). And never show data without interpretation; the reader wants the “so what.”

One project, several reports

The same analysis can and should be packaged differently for different readers. An executive version is one page, recommendation first, dollars and percent only, no jargon. A technical version gives the data sources, code, model choices and diagnostics for analysts who need to check or extend it. An industry brief frames the findings for the market or policy landscape: what this means for the business, its competitors or regulators. And an academic paper keeps the full method and robustness checks, mainly useful when a role explicitly asks for it.

You can combine them. A one-page executive summary with a technical appendix behind it is often exactly what a hiring manager wants to see. Put both versions of a project in your portfolio, because showing you can write the technical version and the memo is the range that gets people hired.

The political layer

Reports and recommendations do not land in a vacuum. Your dissertation never had to deal with this, but your first industry project will.

Know the landscape: understand who benefits from your recommendation and who might feel threatened by it. Share your findings with key stakeholders before the meeting where they are presented, so nobody is surprised in public; surprises create opponents. Be clear about whether you are presenting neutral analysis or arguing for a position, and say which one it is. When stakeholders disagree, present the options and the tradeoffs rather than only your preferred answer, and let the decision-maker decide. Your credibility over the long run comes from being the person whose analysis everyone trusts, including the people who lost the argument.