7 Steps to Better Written Policies and Procedures

Rating:
Summary: The Best Choice for Procedures Authors
Review: "7 Steps to Better Written Policies and Procedures" clearly states that you are proactively listening to the voice-of-the-customer!!!

1. While there are dozens of books on policies and procedures, this book is clearly the best choice for policy and procedure authors.

2. It's new, state-of-the-art, brief, to-the-point, and has everything authors need to know for formatting policies and procedures.

3. While his writing style is dynamic enough to enable cover-to-cover reading, it's modular enough to serve as a desktop reference that facilitates starting at any point within the textbook.

4. More importantly, however, are the technical strong points, which include concise formatting, style, content, presentation, appearance, prose, structure, and completeness (not to mention several comprehensive examples).

5. The author's book authoritatively defines the 7 important elements of all policies and procedures: purpose, revision history, persons affected, policy, definitions, responsibilities, and procedures (with a complete chapter dedicated to each of the 7 areas)

6. Each chapter has a highly structured approach which includes sample templates, purpose, format, common mistakes, scenarios, what to look for, exercises, answers, and pit falls to avoid.

This book is bound to re-energize, re-invigorate, and provide desperately-needed guidance to an otherwise chaotic field of policy and procedure-writing amateurs and novices.

Many kudos to this author, thanks, and I am hoping he continues his legacy to revolutionize the field of policy and procedure writing ...

-David F. Rico-

Rating:
Summary: Simplifies a complex task
Review: I borrowed my copy of this outstanding book when I was tasked to write policies and procedures for my department. Although other reviewers have recommended reading the author's earlier books if you've never written policies and procedures I was able to quickly produce detailed documents that my staff assured me were clear and effective. I attribute my success to the easy to follow steps that Mr. Page gives, and the logical structure that he recommends.

You can't go wrong if you use this book as a guide for policy and procedure writing. It's like a cookbook in many ways, with a clearly laid out recipe for success and a list of ingredients that will be required in the form of steps and item blocks for your documents.

I was so impressed with this book that I immediately ordered a copy for myself (so I could return the borrowed copy), as well as copies of Mr. Page's other books. If you write policies and procedures for a living, or are required to produce them for your department you should get this book ASAP. It will simplify the task and enable you to produce professional results regardless of your level of experience.

Rating:
Summary: Great for Book for Writing Well Written Policies and Procedu
Review: I was pleasantly suprised how helpful this book was. Steve demonstrates how to write a procedure so it will be understood by those who use it. His book certainly showed me many of the flaws in my procedure writing. The examples of "what not to do" point out styles that are inappropriate for procedures.

Steve also explains how to format a procedure for ease of use.

Rating:
Summary: A helpful book on writing style
Review: I was pleasantly suprised how helpful this book was. Steve demonstrates how to write a procedure so it will be understood by those who use it. His book certainly showed me many of the flaws in my procedure writing. The examples of "what not to do" point out styles that are inappropriate for procedures.

Steve also explains how to format a procedure for ease of use.

Rating:
Summary: Adds Structure, Clarity and Effectiveness
Review: This book is better suited to experienced policies and procedures writers. If you are new to writing policies and procedures I highly recommend first reading the author's first book, "Establishing a System of Policies and Procedures" from which the key principles in this one are derived.

As someone who has extensive experience I found this book to be an invaluable aid. The structured format the author provides ensures that your policies and procedures are consistent.

The most valuable sections that even the most experienced writer will appreciate are (1)40-step action plan that sets forth roles and responsibilities, key tasks and quality assurance of your policies and procedures (this section is based on another of the author's books titled "Achieving 100% Compliance of Policies and Procedures"). (2) The 5-step writing process. This section is a model workflow that augments the action plan, as well as provide a good basis for estimating level of effort to produce policies and procedures. In fact, this 5-step process can be adapted to any type of writing from user manuals to proposals. I have completely incorporated this into my own "bag of tricks". (3)Templates and examples. The best way to learn is by example and the ones provided in this book add more value and show best practices.

Aside from providing an effective 7-step approach to developing policies and procedures (including the 40-step action plan and 5-step writing process), this book can easily serve as a style guide for corporate policy and procedure writers, as well as a training manual for members of business teams tasked with developing policies and procedures. I cannot emphasize strongly enough the fact that this book should be used in conjunction with "Achieving 100% Compliance of Policies and Procedures" if you are serious about quality policies that are enforceable. I also recommend that you consider "Establishing a System of Policies and Procedures" instead of this book if you are new to writing policies and procedures. After you've mastered the basics this book will serve as a ready reference.

Rating:
Summary: Okay for P&P but not for just Procedure Writing
Review: This book is fine if you are looking for a guide to create a Policy & Procedure manual where the procedures are at a high level. You should, however, look elsewhere if you are looking for a guide on how to write clear, easy-to-use procedures. The format for the procedures in this book is similar to the technical writing style of 20 years ago and is not suitable for procedures that will actually have to be followed by the end-user. You should look to Nancy J. Campbell's "Writing Effective Policies and Procedures," Blake & Bly's "The Elements of Technical Writing," or an Information Mapping seminar if you are interested in creating "user-friendly" procedures.

Rating:
Summary: Great for Book for Writing Well Written Policies and Procedu
Review: This book is just what is advertised, how to write better policies and procedures. It advocates the use of a writing format that makes for easy-to-read policies and procedures, a format that I know from conferences is used worldwide by many companies. This book is for procedure writers, not technical writers. And this book is not high-level, it is very detailed to the extent that my company has bought more than 25 of these books to hand out to each person who writes policies and procedures. While the book is very simple, it is still by far the best book I have read on the subject. I find the competition too convulted and they don't stay on the point. Not so with this author's books.

Jay

Rating:
Summary: High Quality Book on a Procedures Writing Format
Review: Writing policies and procedures is challenging because if they are unclear they will not be followed. As someone who does this for clients I can attest that the writing format that the author Stephen Page suggests is the key to writing quality documents. The template for the 7 writing elements described in this book is an essential means of providing readers with a clear understanding of the policies and procedures.

The book is divided into 3 parts:
Part 1 discusses the writing format, the writing process, and "Editing Checklist" to improve your writing skills for policies and procedures.
Part 2 includes the case study that is the focus of the scenarios used for Chapters 4 to 10. Exercises, suggested answers, and explanations of these answers, are included for each of the seven sections of the Writing Format.
Part 3 contains three samples of policies and procedures for references and comparison purposes.

In chapters 4 through 10 exercises were given. I worked these examples through, and compared them with the samples of *good* and *not so good* answers that were in the book. I found that the book contained new ideas that I did not think of. Of course, there can be different answers, but these are great exercises to practice on to produce Policies and Procedures that will have a consistent and organized format.

The writing format is a great template and will provide structure to your documents. This book goes right next to my copy of Steve Page's Achieving 100% Compliance of Policies and Procedures as a valuable and frequently used tool.