How to maximise value from your next update

How to maximise value from your next update

by | - Deductive storylines, - Procurement, - Stakeholder Management, - Updates

This morning’s coaching session was revealing.

I was helping Liz, a procurement leader who is one year into her role with a significant financial institution.

This institution has until recently seen its procurement team as ‘order takers’ who processed requests for new hires or technology.

One year in, Liz needs to update her leaders on her progress and has received a list of things she needs to cover in her update.

It is tempting to organise your story around the request you receive from your leader, but this leaves significant value on the table.

What to do?

Here was my recommendation.

Take a few moments to clarify the real ask and the value she could deliver with this update rather than responding literally to the request list. Let me explain what this does and does not mean.

This DID mean clarifying what outcome she would like from the presentation while keeping in mind the list of items she was asked to include. Here is where we got to:

Firstly, we confirmed the ask which was to

  • Share statistics on the year’s progress so far
  • Offer a case study around the negotiations she facilitated on the new enterprise resourcing platform
  • Provide options for how to proceed for the coming financial year
  • Explain where she is up to in lifting the overall procurement capability

Secondly, we clarified her desired outcome as follows: As a result of this presentation, I want my head of operations to be excited about the plans we have for FY24.

Thirdly, we close a pattern. We merged Watch Out with To B or Not To B, which I have paraphrased as follows:

  1. We made great progress during FY23 in delivering on Horizon 2 of our Procurement Uplift Plan. She then supported this with statistics on each key metric, qualitative examples where relevant, the case study on the major new platform.
  2. Increasing our focus on partnering with the business during the coming financial year is the best way to progress into Horizon 3. She then outlined the options and explained why partnering was the right focus.
  3. Therefore, we will focus on partnering in FY24. She then offered her program plan for 24, organised around the four themes from the original plan.

This enabled her to showcase what had gone well over the past year to set up her plan for the coming year.

This DID NOT mean asking one of her team to throw a few PowerPoint slides together in response to the list her operations head offered and going from there.

An easy way to get started would have been to flick a quick request to her team and ask them to pull a quick deck together for her to review based on that briefing.

This would have led to a number of problems

  1. A disconnected list of items that were potentially informative but not insightful
  2. Time wasted in iterating on pages that may or may not have been relevant once the messaging became clear
  3. The risk that she and the team became wedded to individual slides because they had invested effort in preparing them and couldn’t let them go

This is a challenge I see quite often so thought I’d raise it as a reminder to return to first principles rather than responding reactively to requests.

Hope that helps, more next week.

 

Davina

 

PS A new episode of Cutting Through is out now! I had the pleasure of speaking with Adam Bennett who shared fantastic leadership and communication wisdom around communicating during great change.

It was a fantastic conversation, please do enjoy listening to it on your favourite podcast streaming service or on the members portal here >> 

 

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How to get good input into a project

How to get good input into a project

by | - Grouping storylines, - Public Health, - Synthesis, Architecture, Blog

This evening we helped Carla prepare for some conversations with senior health researchers that offers some insights for us all. 

The fun thing with this piece is that it doesn’t fit one of our patterns, and so we need to work from first principles. 

I’ll explain in three parts: 

  1. Outline Carla’s situation  
  1. Discuss the options we explored  
  1. Describe first principles approach 

Carla’s situation: Carla was preparing for meetings with experts whom she might collaborate with on her Masters’ Project. 

Carla was seeking input for a research project. As part of her Masters’ program, she needs to collaborate with experts interested in designing acute psychiatric wards in ways that are part of the therapeutic treatment. The idea is that the facility can be designed to deliver some of the treatment. 

For example, access to daylight helps heal those experiencing acute psychosis. Likewise, the right kinds of sound exposure can help some patients. 

She has been overwhelmed with interest from academics and industry leaders and now needs to identify which experts she will work with. The risk is that she is swept up in other people’s agendas rather than balancing those agendas with her own. 

Options explored: We balanced the need to remain open to input while maintaining some control over the research direction. 

Option 1 – crafting a list of questions would have opened her to the risk of needing to reject help and get these esteemed industry experts off side 

We discussed developing a well-grouped (of course!) list of questions for Carla to ask but decided this left the conversation too open. 

While it can be useful to do this on a pure fact-finding mission, her goal here was more specific. 

She wanted to see whether the researchers were interested in collaborating with her within her broad area of interest.  

Although open to their input, she didn’t want to go too far off her desired path to prioritise the researchers’ areas of interest over her own. 

Option 2 – Couching the story as a discussion starter rather than a locked-in proposal offered the right balance 

We limited the frame for discussion to her area of interest while also keeping the door open for significant suggestions. 

Although we weren’t initially aware of this, the order of the points was pivotal to maintaining control. We began with the idea that she was most confident in, which was the area she wanted to focus on. We then moved toward the areas that she needed more input on. 

We built the story together as a grouping that operated from first principles rather than using a pattern. Here’s how that went: 

So What – outlined her high-level goal. This was to find the best way to contribute to making inpatient care more restorative and so reduce the need for restraint and seclusion.  

Top line supports – outlined her preliminary thinking. We worked from the things she was most confident about to the areas where she needed most help.  

Point 1 – Area of research focus 

Point 2 – Research areas she’d already identified and was keen to test 

Point 3 – Initial ideas about research methodology 

Point 4 – Ideas about what success might look like 

Note that I have outlined here the topics she was covering, but not the messages. See the storyline below to review how those came together. 

I did this deliberately to reinforce another idea. We want to make sure all points are fleshed out as messages rather than topics that can be misconstrued. 

First principles approach: We worked from first principles rather than using a pattern as none of the seven fitted the situation 

You can see from the skeleton above and the example below that this does not fit one of our patterns, but rather is from first principles. 

Here’s what I mean by that. 

We have a short introduction (as usual) with a context, trigger and question. 

There is one main message, a ‘so what’ which provokes a single question. In this case, that question is ‘why?’. 

We then answer that question with a set of reasons, each one covering off a different topic. 

The Pitch and Traffic Light patterns are based on this generic ‘why story’ structure. Both put forward an idea and then support with a list of reasons. 

So, even when you can’t find a pattern, you can still use the storylining principles to build your story. 

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

PS You can watch the full session below to see us using first principles in action.

 

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When to use a Close the Gap pattern

When to use a Close the Gap pattern

by | - Finance, - Patterns, - Project Management, - Technology, 2 - Develop your storyline

Today’s thought emerges from the group coaching session we held just before Christmas.

The key takeaway for those present related to the difference between the technically ‘right’ answer and the one that addressed the people issues that needed to be addressed.

Playing with patterns enabled us to tease out the real issue that involved more senior leaders taking on responsibility for a non-financial loss.  Here’s how it played out.

  1. At first, the story seemed superficially simple, but it included a twist
  2. Playing with patterns enabled us to tease out the real issue and identify the best story
  3. Merging two patterns together was the best way to address both the practical and political issues


1 – The story was superficially simple, but included a twist

We were preparing a request for Brooke who needed to gain agreement from stakeholders about who would absorb the hit to their P&L if a particular change was implemented.

The plot twist here was that implementing the change was in line with the objectives of the broader streamlining initiative, but Brooke didn’t want her team to ‘take the hit’.

2 – Playing with patterns enabled us to tease out the real issue

So, we played with some storyline versions and ended up comparing two after discounting Houston: Close the Gap and another story which merged Opportunity Knocks and Watch out.

Houston didn’t work because the statement was actually known to the audience. It looked a bit like this

  • Fraud will occur when there is an opportunity to transfer funds outside the bank [known, not news so doesn’t belong below the so what]
  • However, there is good commercial reason for transferring funds outside the bank
  • Therefore, consider enabling the capability of allowing OFI transfers within term deposit widget

Close the Gap was promising and looked a bit like this

  • Successfully streamlining customer experience requires us to enable customers to transfer early maturity funds outside the bank [list of reasons aligned with the criteria including allow maximum use of digital channels]
  • However, we currently don’t allow them to transfer early maturity funds outside the bank through the online portal
  • Therefore, allow them to do those transfers online

The merged Opportunity Knocks and Watch Out was even more promising and looked a bit like this

  • There is an opportunity to improve customer experience by enabling customers to transfer early maturity term deposit funds outside the bank in line with brand Z  [the statement from the ‘Opportunity Knocks’ pattern]
  • However, enabling this new digital feature will expose the bank to greater non-lending losses [the comment from the ‘Watch Out’ pattern]
  • Therefore, decide whether to accept greater non-lending losses [the recommendation that naturally follows from the statement and comment]


3 – Merging two patterns together balanced the personal and political issues best

Once we could see all of the potential patterns laid out in front of us, it was pretty easy to decide which way to go.

The merged story targeted the real reason why Brooke was raising the issue. It went further than just saying ‘we should do this because it will support customers better’.

It focused on getting agreement for who will take on the risk that needed to be accepted to allow customers to transfer funds outside the bank through the digital portal.

The leaders were of course then free to decide whether they supported this new capability being included in the program or not.

You can watch the session recording below.

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

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How to get a yes for out of cycle funding requests

How to get a yes for out of cycle funding requests

by | - Business Case, - Finance, - Project Management, - Stakeholder Management

A client of mine once told us about her experience putting storylining into practice, and I thought you might find her experience useful.

The most important thing to note is not so much the techniques for getting funding – which might or might not interest you – but the way she thought about her communication strategy to engage the different stakeholders.

Read on to learn how she did it …

Getting out-of-cycle funding for new projects can be difficult, particularly if they won’t immediately add to your bottom line.

Elizabeth, a project manager with a large Australian finance house, recently proved how fully understanding each of your gatekeeper’s concerns and pitching them individually at their point of interest (not yours) increases your chances of getting the funding you need.

Upon receiving a ‘request’ from the industry regulator to improve the way her business was reporting on some of its activities, Elizabeth’s first reaction was to approach the finance team for the $10 million she needed to complete the work.

However, she realised that finance may well say ‘no’ as her division had a heavy balance sheet and a habit of running a budget surplus.

To solve this, she used three storylines to negotiate her way through a tailored, four-step communication strategy to manage the different stakeholder agendas.

Here are the steps she took:

Step 1: Mapped out the stories for her key stakeholders

First, Elizabeth worked with a colleague to map out the general architecture for the stories she needed to take to the leadership team and to Finance.

Step 2: Prepared a story about her communication strategy for her boss

Once these were bedded down – hand written on one A4 page – she prepared a story for her manager to gain his approval of both her strategy and the general content of her presentations to both audiences. The stories and a copy of her paper to the leadership team are available for download below.

It was a short meeting: In 10 minutes he agreed with her strategies and her presentation storylines and also to support her approach among the other leaders.

Step 3: Gained leadership team agreement

Once this was agreed, she arranged a slot in the next leadership team meeting to discuss the budget prioritisation that was needed. This meeting was predictably difficult with team leaders not wanting to give up their budgets, however with quite some negotiation she extracted $2 million seed funding for the project.

She then tweaked the Finance storyline to add in the details stemming from the leadership team meeting.

Step 4: Gained Finance team agreement

Finance was predictably reluctant to part with such a large sum and agreed to allow her to start the projects by running them in deficit, effectively over riding the leadership team’s protection of their budget numbers.

So there you go. That's how she did it.
You can download her storylines as a PDF or PPTX below.

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina
Download PDF
Download PPTX

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Political Trade-offs

Political Trade-offs

by | - Articulate your Answer (So What), - Grouping storylines, - Project Management, - Stakeholder Management

 

Have you been in a position where you must implement a solution that you disagree with?

This is the situation Anya found herself in recently, which set up a great discussion around trade-offs, politics and what to do when your CEO is one of your objectors.

In tonight’s working session we helped Anya craft a story that has some useful lessons.

In sum, respectfully documenting disagreement can place responsibility where it belongs while also providing one last chance to reverse the decision.

  1. Disagreement can be respectful
  2. Feeling pushed into a taking a poor decision may signal that you are taking on someone else’s responsibility
  3. Communicating your disagreement can put that responsibility back on the decision makers

Disagreement can be respectful

We played around for quite a while to work out how to present this story so that it both gave the leaders what they were insisting upon while explaining the costs of this approach.

We decided to

  • Avoid going in ‘all guns blazing’ and recommending the Clarity solution given it would get the general manager, executive director and CEO offside.
  • Stick with the leaders’ preferred recommendation but help educate them about some areas where they were ill informed. For example, they were conflating ‘on prem Clarity’ and ‘Cloud Clarity’. Their high-cost experiences were based on the on prem version of Clarity being used for project payslips, not the Cloud version Anya preferred to use for project management.

Feeling pushed into a taking a poor decision may signal that you are taking on someone else’s responsibility

Part of the difficulty in crafting a story like this is the emotional frustration that can get in the way. As Anya said, she had expected to sit down over the weekend with a couple of gins and tonic to work out what to say to her leaders.

The reason it felt difficult is that she was feeling the heat of a poor decision that would be costly and time consuming to implement in comparison with her preferred solution.

Laying out the trade-offs for the leaders gave her an opportunity to pass the responsibility for those trade-offs back up the chain to those who were making the decision.

If the reports were costly or late, it would no longer be her problem.

Communicating your disagreement can put that responsibility back on the decision makers (and protect you too)

Leaders are charged with making decisions with the whole organisation in mind, which can lead to unpopular decisions. Sometimes, however, these decisions can also be ill informed simply because they are not close enough to the trade-offs incurred.

This is where a delicate effort to convey those trade-offs while respecting someone’s position is essential to return the responsibility for the costs of a decision to the decision makers.

 

Tonight we took two steps to achieve that. We

  • Balanced curtesy with a directness that meant they could not avoid seeing the cost to the business they were recommending. For example, we edited the so what …
    • From this … Given our existing relationship, I recommend proceeding with Service Now for the 5 PMOs, despite delayed reporting and greater cost when compared against Clarity.
    • To this … I recommend proceeding with Service Now for the 5 PMOs, prioritizing our existing relationships over delayed reporting and greater cost compared against Clarity.
  • Structured the story to compare the two options by factually comparing them to draw out the trade-offs they were making.

I have laid out the storyline below for your use, but do encourage you to check out the recording further down. It was a great conversation.

I hope that helps. More next week.

Davina

Download Storyline

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, 

The difference between being ‘clear’ and being compelling’

The difference between being ‘clear’ and being compelling’

by | - Board communication, - Compliance - audit, - Grouping storylines, - Not for profit, - Prose, - Q&A Recording, - Stakeholder Management, 3 - Deliver your communication

This week's working groups provided an excellent opportunity to think about the difference between being ‘clear' and being ‘compelling'.

I have drawn out three key takeaways that highlight that although being clear is a useful place to start, it is often not enough.

Making the leap from being clear to being compelling required us to lean into my favourite question: why?

Did the ‘trigger' really describe why we were communicating about the information in the context? For example:

Version 1 – The Board has used this as an opportunity to review the Constitution and governance practices to ensure compliance and to identify opportunities for improvement.

Version 2 – We are proposing some amendments for your consideration ahead of the coming AGM

Did the ‘so what' synthesise the items together and explain why this group of actions was necessary?

Version 1 – Amending the Constitution will ensure it is able to reflect community expectations, provide flexibility, allow for technological advances and meet best practice governance standards.
 
Version 2 –The Board seeks Members' endorsement at the AGM to amend the Constitution to meet best practice governance standards and maintain full funding.
Did each top line point explain explain why each group of actions was important?

Version 1 – With one exception, was a list of topics rather than messages
    • Reflect community expectations [the exception]
    • Clarification and flexibility
    • Technological advances
    • Governance best practice
Version 2 –A list of outcomes that each group of amendments would deliver
    • Reflect community expectations by being more inclusive
    • Clarify lines of responsibility to tighten governance and qualify for future funding
    • Allow for technological advances
    • Update timeframes around the voting process

Here is the video from the working session.

DOWNLOAD NOTES

How to make a deductive structure ‘really sing’

How to make a deductive structure ‘really sing’

by | - Board communication, - Case studies, - Deductive storylines, - Risk management, - Technology, 2 - Develop your storyline

 Have you ever wondered what holds a deductive flow together?

Part of the success requires the statement and comment to be tightly linked together, along with the comment and the therefore point.

However, weak support for any of the points, but particularly the comment can bring the whole story undone.

This played out with what was a ‘good cyber strategy’ that I worked on with a senior leadership team this week.

Let’s unpack what we did to convert it into a great cyber strategy.

  1. The introduction was tight and led to a clear and compelling ‘so what’
  2. The high-level storyline be a promising ‘Houston’ pattern. It set up the problem as the first point, explained how to fix that problem in the second and led to a clear and related set of actions
  3. The storyline was let down by a disconnect between the comment and its supporting points. This storyline fell into a common trap of outlining the actions in the strategy here rather than explaining why these are the right actions

I have simplified and sanitised the before and after versions here to illustrate. You can also download the example below in pptx format.

I hope that helps and look forward to bringing you more next week.

Regards,
Davina

Download Example
How to discuss risks with decision makers

How to discuss risks with decision makers

by | - Decision making, - Human Resources, - Retail sector, - Risk management

When talking about the risks in a recent Board paper with a Chief Technology Officer for a national retailer, he said something very interesting.

The risks section SHOULD make us feel uncomfortable.

If it does, then we are not only being honest but can be confident that the leadership will trust us.

His view was firmly that if we are ‘gilding the lilly' by only including the positives, then they won’t trust us and neither they should.

He said if we did that we would also let ourselves down.

We would not be demonstrating that we have thought deeply about our recommendation and how we will counter the inevitable risks we will face in delivering on our commitments within it.

If we are honest and highlight the things that are keeping us up at night and can demonstrate how well we have thought them through they will trust us more.

It will also lead to a much more robust discussion with the leaders and lead to a better outcome for the business.

Look at Mary’s example regarding the risks associated with her new talent strategy. It highlights the shift toward a powerful acknowledgement of the risks versus a ‘tick a box’ list of items to be covered.

Old version asserting that ‘all is well’ was also quite process oriented –

We will review the impact and risk associated with implementing the strategy through the agile Quarterly Business Review process.

  1. We are clear on the risks associated with this strategy and have plans to address
  2. We will track outcomes through the agile QBR process

New version with a stronger list of risks to be managed focused properly on the risks themselves while also having a clear point of view –

We have mitigations in place to minimise the risks and ensure our strategy delivers full long-term value

  1. Cementing SLT approval for FY21 and FY22 budget of $X m
  2. Working with leaders to ensure they don’t refuse to move top talent or hold onto sub part talent
  3. Investing in chapter leads so they can drive talent development within chapters

The difference is quite stark, isn't it?

I hope that helps.

Kind regards,
Davina

PS – Will I see you at this week's working sessions? We have some terrific documents to work through. Got to Session Registration on the top menu to register.

How to avoid ‘slippage’ in our introductions

How to avoid ‘slippage’ in our introductions

by | - Human Resources, - Introductions (CTQ), 2 - Develop your storyline

Last week's email focused on a common challenge with introductions: how to avoid drowning your audience in ‘background'.

This week I'd like to continue this theme by drawing on some insights from this week's Intensive Workshop.

Here was the group's big takeaway: It is easy to allow our content to ‘slip' into the wrong part of your storyline which muddles your message.

Here are two suggestions to help you avoid falling into the slippage trap.

  1. Watch that your ‘so what' doesn't slip into your trigger to surprise your audience with too much too soon
  2. Watch that your context doesn't slip into your trigger so you avoid explaining why you are communicating

Here is some more detail on each as well as a before and after example to illustrate.

Tip #1 – Watch that your ‘so what' doesn't slip into your trigger to surprise your audience with too much too soon.

Ask yourself whether the trigger you are using describes why you are communicating with this audience right now and whether it includes new and unexpected information.

Here's an example where the trigger is actually the ‘so what'.

Context – We are in a phase of the pandemic where the war on talent, the great resignation, the organisational disconnect resulting from 1 1/2 years of social isolation are putting us at risk of losing key business services talent.

Trigger – We need to engage, connect and invest in our talent.

Question – How do we engage, connect and invest in developing our talent?

So what – Organize a virtual business services summit.

As you can see, even though this leads to the intended ‘so what', it gives too much away too early. In this case, the audience were quite challenging and not convinced that ‘engaging, connecting and investing in talent' was the solution.

An alternative would be as follows:

Context – We are in a phase of the pandemic where the war on talent, the great resignation, the organisational disconnect resulting from 1 1/2 years of social isolation are putting us at risk of losing key business services talent.

Trigger – We need to focus our efforts on retaining key talent before it's too late.

Question – How do we do that?

So what – Organize a virtual business services summit to identify ways to engage, connect and invest in our high priority team members to keep them.

Tip #2 – Watch that your context doesn't slip into your trigger so you avoid explaining why you are communicating.

Remember that the trigger for doing something is not the same as the trigger for communicating.

Here's an example of where part of the context was written into the trigger:

Context – We've been asked to submit a proposal for stakeholder consultation and website review services.

Trigger – This is a competitive tender which will be assessed against 4 criteria.

Question – How can we show that we are the best providers for delivering on the project outcomes?

So What – What examples of our work can you provide that demonstrate that we are the best provider of these services?

Here's an alternative:

Context – We've been asked to submit a proposal for stakeholder consultation and website review services. This tender is competitive.

Trigger – I need your help to prepare the tender.

Question – How can I help?

Answer – Please provide examples of our recent work that help us demonstrate that we meet the following four criteria.

I hope that helps.

Have a great week,
Davina

PS – Momentum Folk – remember to register for this week's coming session.

The importance of asking ‘Why?’

by | - Project Management, - Q&A Recording, - Stakeholder Management, 1 - Design your strategy

In this session, we worked on Brooke's email which highlighted the importance of asking ‘why'.

  • Why might audiences be objecting (are they unwilling or unable?)
  • Why do you need to communicate? What is it you need them to know?

Once you have nailed down the ‘why', the storyline becomes so much clearer.

As always, we've included the notes below so you can see how we work through the storyline planner from the initial brainstorming through to the first draft of the email.

Download notes here

How to avoid being diverted by the back story so you can focus on the today story

How to avoid being diverted by the back story so you can focus on the today story

by | - Board communication, - Case studies, - Human Resources, - Stakeholder Management

Has this happened to you?

You have an important presentation to make to a senior leadership group and a big chunk of the time is spent talking about ‘background’.

The leaders ask every question under the sun about the history of the program, what you have done in the past and you find yourself repeating your last five presentations. You use precious face time with them looking backwards rather than looking forwards.

This was a hot topic in today’s coaching session with the Senior People Leader at an Australian retailer.

Let’s look at what was going on before looking at a sanitised version of the before and after.

Here's what was going on : ‘Mary’ was going into way too much detail in the introduction

Mary would brace herself for these discussions as they felt a bit like an interrogation and to head off the questions, she included lots of background up front.

She referred to the history of the People Strategy and went into quite some detail about it.

However, in doing this she was also leaving the door open for questions as the first part of her paper wasn’t a complete summary, or perhaps described past events using new words which piqued the Board’s curiosity.

Her strategy was backfiring.

To avoid this, we suggest tightening your introduction to lead your audience directly where you want them to go (to the So What).

Here are four tips for doing that.

  1. Assume you must synthesise your context as tightly as you would synthesise your ‘so what’. Even for a lengthy paper, keep the context short, ideally to no more than 2-3 sentences in total.
  2. Stick to information that is or should be known to the audience.
  3. Ensure the trigger articulates clearly and simply why you are communicating with this audience about the topic described in the context at this point in time.
  4. Focus on material that introduces the topic as it stands right now. This will prime your audience on the topic that you want to discuss and open the door for the trigger rather than more questions.

Here’s a sanitised before and after to illustrate.

The ‘Before’ included far too much detail which gave the audience a chance to derail the conversation and not get to the so what

[CONTEXT] Talented people needed to deliver our ambition, has and been remains a business goal. We have focused on talent over the last 3 years – approach largely individualistic and limited by poor capability frames

Our new operating model provides an opportunity for us to differentiate ourselves in the talent market – move talent to max value work, no other retailer using this new operating approach, and we can become known for development

We have started implementing a 3-year strategy to drive enterprise talent & capability and that has changed the talent profile through recruitment. Development will be the focus in the following years

We will track impact and manage talent-based risk

[TRIGGER] We have a Talent strategy that we believe will deliver on our goal to win through talent.

[QUESTION] What is your strategy?

The ‘After’ is much tighter all round and led to a tighter discussion around Mary's agenda

[CONTEXT] Moving to the new operating model provides us with an opportunity to differentiate ourselves in the talent market. This enables us to build on the foundations established over the past three years to develop a winning talent strategy.

[TRIGGER] We have a new leading edge Talent strategy that will enable us to capture the full opportunity that our new business model offers us.

[QUESTION] What is your strategy?

I hope that helps and look forward to checking in with you again next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

PS – We have working sessions this week. Don't forget to register!

How to close the gap between what is on your head and what is on the page

How to close the gap between what is on your head and what is on the page

by | - Emails, - Finance, - Introductions (CTQ), - Technology, 2 - Develop your storyline

In conducting a quick review of Brian’s email at the start of this week’s working session we identified some common challenges that stem from a common problem.

How do we match what the reader takes from the page with what is in our heads as the communicator?

This is the holy grail of communication and can be particularly challenging to achieve when trying to follow the ‘rules’ of building a storyline.

With practice, these two things come together, but today’s example highlights some traps to avoid during this learning journey while also reminding us of how to bring the ‘real world’ together with the theory.

[As an aside, I want to thank Brian for sharing this one with us. There was lots of good to take away about the supporting structures … the opportunities for improvement lay particularly with the introduction.]

Tip 1 – Start the story ‘very close’ to the real event rather than going back in time

 

Starting with ‘screeds of background’ is one of the biggest complaints senior leaders have of decision-making papers and updates.

It is also a turnoff for other audiences who need to wade through it all before getting to the main game.

Yet, this is a very common challenge I see in corporate communication of all kinds, which stems I think from a fear of the audience not knowing enough history about the topic being discussed.

So, what to do?

Imagine yourself sitting down with your audience with a cup of coffee. Speak the words you would say to open the conversation. Out loud, possibly into your phone to capture them, not with your fingers on your keyboard.

These may well be the words to use at the start of your communication and if not, they will get you closer than starting ‘writing’.

Here is the difference you will see:

Context going too far back in time –

Regulations that came into effect on 1st June 2021 are being addressed in the Project by implementing a new database and new commissions processing system (Performio). Imagine a few lines of details explaining what has been done to implement the new system.

Context that reflects the right point in time (acknowledging the sentence is a bit long) –

One of the key decisions we need to make now before we go live on 1 October is whether we switch now to the new system or continue to operate the old system in parallel to allow more time to integrate Performio with its dependent systems.

Tip 2 – Avoid conflating the trigger for communicating with the trigger for doing something. These are not the same thing.

 

We use the trigger in storylining to explain to our audience why we are communicating to them about the context right now. We do this so that

The words we use in the trigger will prime them to ask the question we want them to ask.
The link should be so smooth and obvious, they can go nowhere else but to the question we are sending them to … so we can answer it with the ‘so what’.

We don’t use the trigger to explain what has happened to cause the problem or deliver the opportunity we are presenting. This will either be known to the audience and so appear in the context, or news and appear in the so what or the body of the story.

Let me use this example again to illustrate what I mean.

Trigger for communicating –

I have a recommendation for managing this process that needs your approval.

This leads to the question: What is your recommendation?

Trigger for doing something –

Testing analysis for both the database and system have revealed gaps and defects that are currently being fixed for retesting.

This leads to several questions, none of which help set you up to provide the message you need to provide: So? Why do I need to know that? How is this relevant to me?

 

Tip 3 – Craft the question to include only knowledge that you have provided the audience so far in your communication

 

In Tip 2 I explained how using the trigger for doing something sends the audience away from, rather than towards, our so what message.

Another challenge is drafting the question using information that is in our heads and not on the paper.

The initial question from this email was:

Question: Why do we need to retain BCS-BBC processing of Mixed deals in October?

This included information that was not presented to the audience in the context and trigger.

The question needs to flow naturally and so obviously it feels redundant. It might even seem stupidly simple.

Click here >> to get the full before and afters and view the recording.

I hope that helps and look forward to bringing you more next week.

Kind Regards,

Davina

Want ideas for getting the most out of the program?

 

I had a terrific conversation with one of our new members today who was bemoaning her lack of progress in the program so far. Like many of you, she has a busy job and hasn't yet found her ‘groove'.

Here are three ideas that she thought would work for her, that might help you also:

 

  1. Listen to some of the interviews stored in the library during your commute. There are a number, all tagged ‘interview' on topics such as board papers, hypothesis driven problem solving and how to get the information you need from busy stakeholders to prepare a piece of communication.
  2. Lock a time into your diary near the start of your day to complete a module or two. Instead of leaving your learning to the end of the day where it may be ‘run over', locking away 15 minutes will see you finish a module, giving you something useful to try that day.
  3. Set up a time for a 10 minute chat with Sheena to learn to navigate the portal. If you aren't sure how to find what you need, Sheena is very happy to Zoom with you to demonstrate.