How to Write an Executive Summary

Ugur Akinci

Owner

An executive summary is pretty much what the name suggests: it is a one- or two-page summary of a much longer work. Its intended audience is executives and upper management staff who have very little time to read the whole work.

There are two main types of executive summaries: those written for reports and those written for business proposals.

The idea with an executive summary is to convey the gist of the report or proposal within as short a time as possible. We cannot emphasize enough the importance of a well-written compact executive summary since usually that’s all an executive would read before deciding whether to award you a contract, or approving the results of an experiment or research.

GOLDEN RULE: Keep an executive summary as short as possible without, however, omitting any important details (see below).

A Report Executive Summary should cover the following:

• Introduction.

• Main finding of the research.

• Method used to conclude the research (briefly).

• The strength and weaknesses, conditions and reservations, reliability of the finding.

• Implications (policy or otherwise) of the finding.

• Outline of further research needed (if any) on the topic.

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