As the transition in Washington moves into high gear this month, it’s not just the new Trump Administration and Congress that are putting in place plans for policy and legislation; stakeholders are busy creating agendas, too.

Many stakeholder agendas will seek to affect how government addresses such prominent health care issues as the Affordable Care Act, Medicare entitlements, fraud-and-abuse policies, FDA user fees, and drug pricing. There will be a myriad of stakeholder ideas, cutting a variety of directions, all framed with an eye to the new political terrain.

But whatever policies a stakeholder advocates, ideas must be translated into a form that that the political system can digest. For this to occur, an important technical conversion must take place; words must be conjured and organized so that desired policy can become legal reality.  This is no easy task, and stakeholders should proceed thoughtfully.

Here are five takeaways for making proposals concrete and workable:

1. Butterfly Effect

A “simple” contract (to buy a house, say) can end up getting pretty complicated, even when the stated rights and obligations apply to no more than two parties. In contrast, a policy proposal typically seeks to set arrangements for a broad array of parties (perhaps a whole economic sector) and thus will usually involve substantial complexity.

The large number of parties potentially affected means that even the most minor-seeming policy adjustment can have large, unintended, and unpredictable results – not dissimilar from how the proverbial flap of a butterfly’s wings can start the chain reaction that leads to a distant hurricane.

2. Pre-Drafting Steps

Taming the butterfly effect should begin before putting pen to paper. It starts with a clear view of the problem to be solved and the ways to solve it.  Notably, the legislative drafters available to Congress place some considerable emphasis on the steps that precede actual drafting.

For example, the House Legislative Counsel’s Office recommends use of a pre-drafting checklist that includes questions like these: What is the planned policy’s scope (expressed as populations or subjects)? Who will administer the policy? Who will enforce it? When should the policy take effect (and are transition rules needed)? Each of these questions contains multiple sub-questions.

Similarly, the Senate Legislative Counsel’s Office points out that most legislated policies build on prior statutes. As such, it is important to know how new provisions will harmonize with — or will override — previously adopted language. Making these judgments requires a solid grasp of existing legal authorities and ways these authorities have been interpreted.

3. Words on the Page

Translating concepts into words is a specialized task, for ultimately the words must be “right” – they must be technically sufficient to effectuate the policy intended.

It is not news that Congresses, Presidents, and courts sometimes have different views on the meaning of statutes, regulations, and other types of policy issuances. In theory, the drafting curative is to make the words so clear that only a single meaning is possible.  But realistically, legal contention often comes with the territory of a controversial policy, and so stakeholders should at a minimum avoid such unforced errors as these:

• Obvious mistakes – e.g., purporting to amend a U.S. code title that has not been enacted into positive law;

• Wrong law – e.g., confusing the statute that enacts new language with the statute that the new language amends;

• Wrong time – e.g., getting the words right but putting them into effect for an unintended time period;

• Imprecise labels – e.g., referring to concepts or parties via shorthand phrases similar to, but not identical to, defined terms; and

• Vague references — e.g., omitting enough key details to confer unintended discretion on an agency or administrative official.

4. Document Silos

Today’s integrated world doesn’t look kindly on silos, but, in the specialized context of Washington policy development, they can be a helpful check on the temptation to combine technical drafting with political messaging.

The desire to combine these two forms of communication is understandable, for it is an appealing notion that policy proposals be “user friendly” so they can be quickly scanned for substantive gist. In fact, however, the practice is dilutive and dangerous; it can put the wrong words on the page and undermine policy intent.

A better course is for stakeholders to manage separately siloed sets of documents that, while consistent, operate at different levels of specificity. One silo should be reserved for the technically rigorous proposals that effect legal authority and a separate silo for “plain English” issue briefs, fact sheets, and other materials that summarize the authority.

5. Plug & Play

Washington policy debates are less often set battles, more often fast-moving skirmishes. Such places a premium on ability to adapt as new ideas emerge, political signals morph, and coalitions shift.  For the task of converting ideas into policies, there are at least two implications.

First, stakeholders should be prepared to think and draft in modules – in discrete chunks of policy that can be embedded in one or more larger proposals. In Congress, stakeholder-originated ideas are more likely to emerge as legislative amendments than as free-standing bills.

Second, stakeholders should be ready to iterate quickly as debate advances. Feedback from reviewers will often focus on proposal summaries because they are easier to read and understand.  But changes in response to comments must also be reflected in the technical proposals themselves.  Tight deadlines are the norm, so separately siloing the two types of documents (see above) will help speed an effective response when political opportunity strikes.