One of the most common challenges we hear from policy professionals and their managers is this: how do we maintain high-quality policy advice while delivering at speed?

It’s a real and growing tension. The pace of government work has accelerated, and the expectation to produce timely, insightful, and clear policy advice is higher than ever. In response, many of our clients come to us looking for ways to strengthen the capabilities of their people—especially when it comes to writing.

Writing courses are a natural starting point. Clarity, structure, and plain English all matter enormously. But what we’ve found is that the real issue often lies further upstream: it’s the critical thinking behind the advice that slows teams down.

Too often, policy professionals are caught in loops of over-analysis or unclear problem framing. This leads to lengthy internal debates, multiple redrafts, and ultimately—delayed advice. It’s not that teams lack intelligence or motivation; it’s that they need better tools to organise their thinking quickly and effectively.

Like many organisations, we could have developed a broad course on critical thinking. It would have been engaging, full of useful frameworks—story lining, key question structures (CTQs), issue trees, fishbone diagrams. These are all solid tools. But we kept coming back to our core challenge: helping policy professionals deliver excellent advice efficiently.

That’s why we chose to do something more focused and immediately applicable. We’ve developed a practical, applied course built around a single, proven method: multi-criteria analysis. This tool helps policy professionals break down complex decisions, weigh competing options, and arrive at clear, defensible recommendations—quickly.

What makes our Crafting Great Analysis course different is the delivery. It’s grounded in real-world examples and hands-on learning. Participants don’t just learn about multi-criteria analysis—they learn how to use it, under pressure, in the kinds of scenarios they face every day.

We’ve designed this learning experience using best-practice adult learning methods—interactive workshops, structured coaching, and opportunities for people to apply the approach to their specific work. The result? Policy teams that think more clearly, move more quickly, and deliver better advice—on time.

Because in the end, quality advice delivered late misses the mark. But by using a clear structure with the right training, policy professionals can consistently deliver on both quality and timeliness.

And that’s exactly what we’re here to help them do. Talk to us today about our public or in-house course options.