- A full programme, with coaching on participants’ material included
- Up to 6 participants – individual programmes on request.
- Preferably via Zoom – MS Teams and Jitsi possible.
- More information or an offer? Mail to info@yourpoint.nl or call Kees-Jan Donkers
The boxplan: a tried and tested tool for better thinking and effective writing
Your Point took McKinsey’s Piramid Principle (developed by Barbara Minto) and added dozens of years of writing experience and expertise. The result: the boxplan. A versatile tool that helps you clarify your thinking and translate this clarity effortlessly into crisp, compact texts – texts of all size and levels of complexity that readers will be able to access, comprehend, digest and remember with greater speed and ease.
More results with noticably less effort, individually and in groups
- saving 10 to 50% of your time in all your writing efforts;
- creating text that are 10 to 50% shorter than today;
- focusing your text completely to the needs and expectations of your reader(s); in every day life, boxplanned text will stimulate clean discussion and decision making;
- bringing more energy to your text, minimising passive tense and jargon; your texts will be more accessible and engaging, and thus more effective in getting your point across; through separating the thinking and writing phases, your spelling and style will benefit;
- saving time in giving feedback and collaboration in the thinking phase before any text is written;
- writing complex documents in a group, like books or plans, without endless rewrites;
- an every day tool to analyse text and create crystal clear summaries; you quickly identify shortcomings in reasoning, material selection, structure;
- using boxplan techniques for better brainstorms, exploratory group sessions, problem analyses etc.
For all professionals and all text types: business, promotional and educational
In almost 20 years of training and facilitating professionals, we worked with (among others) consultants, (project)managers, team leaders, researchers, scientists, policy and strategy developers, IT-people, students and PhD-level, lawyers, account managers, sales/marketing/communication, support professionals, engineers, technical specialists, writers.
In our courses, they learned to apply the boxplan to short texts like e-mail and letters, blogs and web content, marcom materials, as well as longer texts like (project)plans, policy, vision and positioning documents, research papers, theses, PhD-material, scientific articles, evaluations, meeting minutes, etc. The boxplan also works great for presentations (PPT, prezi).
Focus on thinking phase for maximum results
The name of our programme says it all: Clear thinking, clear writing. Upon closer inspection, most issues that people perceive as writing problems, turn out to be thinking problems: determining the goal of a text, structure, material selection. The boxplan offers a tested, step by step, approach to deal with every issue in the appropriate phase. This keeps you moving forward from the very start, by starting with all thinking business and ending with your writing. In other words: first design the house, then build it.
Format: 3 sessions learning the boxplan, then coaching on your own material
We offer you a practical set-up to keep atttention high, both by limiting session duration and by using engaging and surprising exercises.
- Transfer boxplan theory and practice: 3 sessions of 2 hours duration (preferably on consecutive days);
- Coaching on your own texts: a 2 hour session for every 2 participants; during these sessions, participants learn to apply the boxplan to their own work, be it existing or ‘to be developed’ texts; group writing (books, complex documents) can also be part of the sessions.
Participants receive all materials beforehand by mail: a full handout plus exercises.
This format ensures tow things: one, every participant will grasp the concepts and practical techniques embodied in the boxplan, and two, every participant will have a direct experience how to apply the boxplan to every day writing tasks. Every group will be trained by seasoned professionals with many years of experience in writing ánd group facilitation.