Chapter 05 - When There Aren't Checks And Balances
The writing task proved more challenging than the members of the writing group had expected. Making a forceful argument, in effect prosecuting a case, but doing so in a dispassionate way, was itself a challenge. This is not how courtroom lawyers operate. Then, there was the matter of keeping the argument simple. As there are several online engines that measure the reading difficulty of a work, the group decided to target a seventh grade reading level for all the white papers. This was consistent with making the white papers accessible to a broad audience. They learned the hard way that they needed to reduce the scope in any individual white paper, so rather than just one white paper on a topic there would be part 1 and part 2 as separate white papers but on the same topic and sometimes there would even be part 3. Once they came to this conclusion, the writing became easier. They modified the process rules that the group as a whole had agreed to so that the same team authored eac...