Boardroom Letters
A one-day writing workshop in Edinburgh for senior communicators, with eight hours of drafting, peer critique, and tutorial on the four document forms that actually move boards.
About the day
Boardroom Letters is for the people who write what the chief executive signs. Group communications directors, senior speechwriters, chiefs of staff, and the heads of strategy who quietly hold the pen at the most senior level.
We will spend a day drafting and redrafting four document types, the board-paper executive summary, the chair’s letter to shareholders, the all-staff note in a difficult week, and the one-point memo that has to make a single point sharply and then stop. Thirty participants, two tutors, peer critique in small groups, and a printed casebook of the strongest examples of each form from the last ten years.
Drafts are confidential and stay in the room, the casebook stays with you. The workshop is taught by Padraig Whelan, formerly group communications director at two FTSE 100 companies, with editorial support from Hannah Sieghart.
What you will leave with
- Four redrafted documents in the four forms most senior communicators actually write
- A casebook of strong models you will refer to for years
- Direct critique from peers writing at the same level
Leading the day
Former Group Communications Director, retail and financial services
Padraig Whelan led group communications at two FTSE 100 companies over a fifteen-year career, and was the senior speechwriter at a major UK bank before that. He writes a small private newsletter on business prose, teaches occasionally at the Strathclyde MBA, and is one of the few practitioners who will tell you, in print, when a sentence is doing less work than the writer thinks.
The schedule
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09:30
Opening and the four forms
Why the board paper, the chair’s letter, the all-staff note, and the one-point memo are different beasts.
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10:30
Form one, the board-paper executive summary
Drafting and critique. Ninety minutes, in pairs.
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12:30
Lunch
Seated, ninety minutes.
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14:00
Form two and three, the chair’s letter and the all-staff note
Drafting in trios. Forty-five minutes each, critique in between.
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16:00
Form four, the one-point memo
Both tutors
Solo drafting against a clock. Then read-aloud round the room.
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17:00
Close and casebook collection
Casebooks distributed. Drinks in the library.
Tickets
Early
£380
Early bird
Workshop, casebook, lunch. Released in April.
Standard
£580
Standard
Workshop, casebook, lunch, drinks reception, and a follow-up read of one document by the tutors.
Patron
£780
Patron
All of the above, plus a one-hour private tutorial in the four weeks after the workshop.
Register
How to book
Booking is at the register form above. Payment is taken in full at the time of registration. The venue is The Royal Society of Edinburgh, 22-26 George Street, Edinburgh. If you have a question that needs a conversation rather than a thread, send us a sentence on the contact page and we will reply the same working day.