Kevin Shockey writes on Writing for Management, and suggests
Put whatever message you are trying to convey in the very first paragraph. Preferably in two sentences or less… because anytime you are communicating with anyone at the Director level or above, they have very little bandwidth
In point of fact, I find the implications of this method disturbing. There are two possibilities it suggests. One is that we expect and accept that the handful of people in any organisation with the executive power and responsibility to make significant decisions are incapable of making or unwilling to make the effort to digest non-trivial text. The other is that the production of written materials like this is an essentially meaningless activity, enterprise carried out on cargo-cult principles, where the quality of material is immaterial, only the act of producing something and being seen to produce something.
Are the corporate and collaborative entitites of the West truly so bereft of ability and substance?