Present clear, actionable recommendations

You have managed to catch the attention of a busy policy maker, but what they really want to know is what can be done about this problem. Have you presented clear, actionable recommendations? Policy makers are often overwhelmed by large amounts of data and information. You must be able to take the complex and nuanced findings of your research and turn them into clear, actionable recommendations that are concise and memorable. If the recommendations are too complex, they will often be over-simplified.

Design simple messages which are unlikely to be over-simplified

If you include lots of warnings in your messages, these are often likely to be overlooked. Writing a message like “this will require a three part strategy…” reduces the likelihood that messages are oversimplified rather than adding caveats at the end.