Iterating from Good to Great

Iterating from Good to Great

by | - Deductive storylines, - Exercises, Marketing, Recommendations

In this morning’s working session, we took a deductive storyline from being ‘good’ to being ‘great’.

I thought you might be interested in the journey so have pulled out the insights and offered the recording here for your use. As Brooke mentioned, it’s much easier to rework someone else’s story!

We elevated the quality of both the structure and the reasoning by iterating through a couple of versions. Here are the highlights of the changes we made.

The original version was a flow that made sense but was light on reasoning which is core to a powerful deductive structure. Here are the weak points. The original

  • Was light on reasoning. The story highlighted the problems and aligned the solution with the problems rather than justifying why this was the right way to fix those problems.
  • Was not truly deductive. The story flowed from one thing to the next rather than starting with a broad statement, commenting on that statement and then leading to a powerful recommendation.
  • Contained assumptions. The assumption was that fixing the internal problems would be sufficient to regain the company’s leadership position in the market. While that may be a good place to start, that’s rarely enough to succeed in a competitive environment. If it is, however, then that’s good news and worth a mention!

The new version followed a tightly linked structure that was stronger at all levels. The new version

  • • Elevated the thinking in the statement. We tied together the two potential causes of the problem rather than splitting them across the two limbs of the story.
    • Strengthened out the quality of the thinking in the comment. We felt the original version did not really explain why focusing on the marketing strategy was the right thing to do. While we had to ‘make up’ the data, we could imagine the sorts of information that would be needed and used placeholders for that.
    • Put the actions in context. Instead of saying ‘fix these three things’ in the recommendation, we outlined a phased approach.

So, here’s a challenge for you:

  • Download the original (visualised below) and ‘have a go’ at fixing it. Give yourself 20-30 minutes to do so.

 

 

  • Check out the solution below – reviewing the video if you have a chance
  • There is one more thing wrong with the original version. See if you can find it. Email me if you do.

 

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

Download Exercise
Download Solution

RELATED POSTS

EXERCISE: Strengthen your ‘synthesis muscles’

EXERCISE: Strengthen your ‘synthesis muscles’

by | - Articulate your Answer (So What), - Change management, - Emails, - Exercises, - Finance, - Risk management, - Synthesis, - Technology, - Test your structure

 

Synthesis is at the core of everything we do at Clarity First, and so when I saw an example come across my desk this week I couldn't resist turning it into an exercise.

This email is laid out nicely and yet there are a couple of areas where synthesis can be improved.

When reviewing this one, remember our ‘value ladder' that lays out the different kinds of messages and ask yourself some questions:

  1. What level are these messages at?
  2. How can I synthesise to make it easier for the reader to glean the messages by skimming?

I have included the latest version of the Value Ladder here as reference as well as download links for the before and after versions.

I hope you find it useful.

Dav

 

PS – Those of you who have been following our ‘synthesis project' will note two things with this version of the ladder.

  1. ‘information' includes data that may be catalogued and categorised.
  2. ‘synthesis' can be both informative and insightful. I have labelled that extra level of insight as ‘flair'. We can no doubt debate this more in our next Momentum session!

 

DOWNLOAD ORIGINAL
DOWNLOAD SOLUTION

EXERCISE: Rewrite this invitation so your grandma could understand it

by | - Emails, - Exercises, - Grouping storylines, - Human Resources, - Q&A Recording, - Synthesis, - Test your structure, 2 - Develop your storyline, Calendar Invite, Writing

This week we worked on an email and ended up discussing another truism that can be very hard to execute on.

This morning’s one was: ‘Write it so your grandmother could understand it’.

As an idea it is both good and infuriatingly difficult to execute on.

How to do that?

The key to this morning’s example was to focus on the substance of the message, rather than on the ‘process’ required to gain accreditation.

Here are two steps to take to transfer the learnings into your own work:

In general, focus more on the ‘why’ …

  1. Introduce not just the topic but why it matters. In the example below you can see there is an embedded assumption that the audience knows why this accreditation process matters. I have added some definitions on the slide for those unfamiliar with the human resources landscape.
  2. Dig further into the ‘why’. Ask yourself why you are communicating to this specific audience about this specific topic that they now understand is important.

Practice this by leveraging the example we used in the working session.

  1. Take note of the graphic below that highlights some of the problems with the original.
  2. Download the original, be inspired by these problems and rework it yourself.
  3. Review the recorded working session where we wrangled with it as a group
  4. Check out an enhanced version of our ‘after’ for your reference. I took what we did in the group (which was helpful but not ‘finished’) and refined it further using my knowledge of the actual situation.

I hope you find that useful.

Have a great week.

Dav

DOWNLOAD ORIGINAL
DOWNLOAD AFTER

EXERCISE: Email Rewrite (procurement example)

by | - Exercises, - Procurement

Notes 

As with many customer emails, this one focused far too much on the author than on the audience.

In some ways, they could have kept it even shorter, saying something like:

 

Given we have recently identified that you are a small business supplier, from now on we will pay any new invoice within 30 days.

We apologise for not doing this sooner as we are committed to supporting small businesses like yours.

This, however, doesn’t provide an opportunity to justify why they had not moved sooner in line with Government requirements.

In light of that extra need, my solution is more expansive, while still attempting to be brief.

I hope you find it useful.

 

Solution

Dear valued BigCo supplier,

We have recently identified that you are a small business supplier of ours with an annual turnover of less than $10m.

Moving forward we will be improving your payment terms.

We will pay any new invoices within 30 days of invoice submission in line with the Australian Government’s new Small Business Supplier Payment Code.

Statement – Despite being a big supporter of small business, we have had difficulty in identifying which of our providers are classified as small business suppliers.

Comment – However, a new government tool has been introduced that enabled us to identify small businesses such as yours that deserve short payment terms.

Recommendation – Consequently, we will bring your payment terms forward for any future invoices.

If you have any questions regarding this change in payment terms, please forward your enquiry to procurement@BigCo.com.
Sincerely,
Peter

 

Download original file here

Keywords: Email, deductive structures,