• Online, Instructor-Led
Course Description

The Treadstone 71 Analytic Writing, Reporting and Dissemination course includes intensive writing training, exercises, peer reviews, briefings and reviews, report types and dissemination techniques.  We follow the intelligence community and proven academic methods validated and verified through years of execution. The book we use (Analytic Writing Guide) is a user's guide for writing papers, short memos, and emails when the objective is to inform a busy reader inundated with other papers and preoccupied with other tasks. The course focuses on ideas and information: making sure that all the information needed to understand the main points is in your analytic report and in the right order, minimizing or eliminating extraneous information and ideas, and resolving inconsistencies. The course offers a mix of strategic and tactical advice, ranging from how to get started to how to order information in a paragraph. The recommendations we provide are not hard-and-fast rules, but general guidelines.

Learning Objectives

Analytic Writing, Reports and Briefs, Heuristics, and the Incredible Chunk, Speaking and Writing, News and Knowledge, Writing Schemes and Cognitive Overload, Creativity and the Conceptual Front End, Analytic Writing, Reference Materials, Principles of Analytic Writing, Writing Basics, Standard Formatting, Addressing Focal Questions, Knowing your Stakeholder, Key Questions to Organize your Product. Getting Started Checklist, The Analytic Line of March, Preparing your writing, Rules for Effective Writing, Implications, A Writing Template, Concept Outline, Analytic Writing Process, Common Grammar Offenses, The W Questions, Do not!, Losing your Reader, Clear Linkages, Analytic Coherence, Citations and Bibliography, Setting up Microsoft Word, Reporting, Categories of Finished Intelligence, Detailed Reports, Advisory Reports, Situation Reports, Sensitive Information Reports, Estimative Reports, Forecasting, STEMPLES Plus, Email, Follow-ups, FLASH Precedence, Editing Process, Drafts, Review process, Peer Review Rubric, Briefs, Body of the Brief, Conclusion, Adversary Brief, Current Intelligence Brief, Operational Intelligence Brief, Event Brief, Intelligence Estimate, Executive Brief, Stakeholder Brief

Briefings, Presentational Methods, Feedback Loop.

Framework Connections