In 2022, President Online described Toyota’s rules for writing reports. The writer Noji Tsuneyoshi quoted a Toyota executive who had helped create them. A document is written on a single sheet of A3 paper, turned sideways. Bōtō ni kaku no wa ketsuron de wa nai. Mondaiten no haikei setsumei da. “What is written at the start is not the conclusion. It is an explanation of the background of the problem.”
The executive gave the reason. If only the conclusion is written at the start, the reader cannot tell what the document is about. The headline of the article read: “Writing the conclusion first” is something not to do.