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!

 

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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

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Why thinking into a doc is dangerous

Why thinking into a doc is dangerous

by | - Prose, - Thinking Skills (general), 2 - Develop your storyline, Communication Strategy, Writing

I was reminded this week how we must get our thinking straight in a one-pager before we prepare a document.

In using client material to prepare some exercises I had to work backwards from a document into a storyline.

Wow.

It is so incredibly easy to miss the thinking errors in a document, especially in a PowerPoint deck.

I have pulled out the main problems I gleaned from this example which would have been more easily avoided if the author had prepared a one-pager first.

I have described the top-line first and followed with three prominent errors I saw throughout the deck.

Spotting the top-line problems was easy as it was neatly laid out on an executive summary page. Take a look below to see what I mean. How many problems do you see?

The confluence of factors affecting the market have created significant uncertainty

0. Spot and futures prices are high relative to historical benchmarks and have increased significantly from uneconomic lows only 18 months ago

1. The are many internal and external factors influencing current market outcomes

2. The impact for energy companies has varied and one of the key differentiators has been plant performance

Finding and fixing errors in the supporting pages was difficult as the language and links between ideas were at best muffled. Here are three traps that I drew from the top and supporting areas of this story for your inspiration.

Ban meaningless words … say what you mean! Look at how general the language is and how lacking in specifics. There are very few descriptive words and even fewer numbers.

Follow through when you set up with a frame … Point 2 above references internal and external factors influencing (how???) market outcomes (meaning???). If you are going to introduce concepts like that, use them to group the ideas below.

Avoid repeating higher level ideas within sections … I commonly see people repeat the idea above in the same or similar words. Most often this will be the last point in a list. Be careful to avoid that sort of repetition within your storyline. These sorts of ‘tell them what you told them' tactics can be useful in a document, but muddy the thinking within the storyline itself.

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

Cheers,
Dav

PS – A warm welcome to our new members.

I have opened the doors to Early Birds and at the time of writing we have half a dozen who have joined today alone. We look forward to working with you!

If you are enjoying the program, please do tell your friends and colleagues about it so they can join. Download the brochure here to share with them.

2 ways to spend less time prepping your comms

2 ways to spend less time prepping your comms

by | - PowerPoint, - Prose, 3 - Deliver your communication, Presentations

Love or hate Jeff Bezos, he has had some very, very good ideas when it comes to decision making communication.

I was talking about one of these with a client earlier this week. Given she liked the ideas and planned to implement them, I thought I'd share them with you also.

The most prominent idea relates to avoiding PowerPoint in favour of tightly crafted prose narratives to maximise quality decision making. Let me explain the two key ideas my client found so useful.

Avoid PowerPoint presentations. In relying on Edward Tufte's work on visualising information, ‘Jeff' decided to ban PowerPoint for reasons that seem sound to me.

  • Preparing decks is hard to do it well, and he questioned the value of spending lots of time fussing over lining up boxes and making ‘pretty slides' versus thinking hard about the ideas to convey.
  • Presenting is a slow way to convey ideas. According to Tufte, we can absorb information three times faster by reading than by listening to a presentation.
  • Great presenters can ‘wallpaper over' cracks in their logic with their energy and charisma, leading to poor decisions.

Here's what they do instead.

Rely on short, tightly crafted prose narratives instead. They don't insist on any particular way of writing these, just that they be short and effective in setting up a great discussion. Their use in meetings is, however, prescribed as follows. The papers are

  • Read during the meeting. This at least two few benefits: everyone actually reads the papers and the quality of the thinking is better because of the extra focus paid to them.
  • Designed to be a ‘goldilocks length' that takes about a third of the meeting to read. They suggest 3 pages for a 30 minute meeting and 6 for a one-hour meeting on the assumption that the typical exec takes about 3 minutes to read a page. Interestingly, apparently Jeff Bezos is always the last to finish reading as he critiques every single sentence by asking: what if that were false?
  • Reviewed in advance to ensure they deserve their place in the meeting.

I hope that provides some useful food for thought. A number of my clients are moving to prose-only papers for senior bodies.

I'd be interested to know the balance in your organisations. If you click the relevant link below, I'll see the tally and can factor this into my program design for you.

In my organisation, decision making papers are …

When you click the link it will take you to the site.

More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

PS – Please do tell your friends and colleagues about the Thinking Skills workshop that I am hosting later this month. I will introduce some foundational ideas that will help them (ie they will get a small piece of what we offer inside Clarity First). Learn more here.

How to kill off unwanted email chains

How to kill off unwanted email chains

by | - Articulate your Answer (So What), - Clarify your purpose, - Emails, - Understand your audience, Blog

I wasn't sure if we'd have anything to work on during today's working session, but as usual I was proved wrong and wanted to share the insights with you.

In walking the line between ‘what to storyline' and ‘what is too small to worry about' we extracted four useful takeaways:

Storylining is worthwhile if it saves you work. In this case, Mia offered up a question about a short email that led to a useful structuring discussion. She wondered what she could have done differently to avoid a reply which led to another email on her part. 

Structuring helps work out what is wrong with even a short email. In this case, almost all the elements were all there, but the structuring wasn't quite right and something was missing which kicked off an unwelcome email chain.

In reworking it to follow a CTQ format, we were able to craft something that was still short but which would have avoided the email chain.

It's OK to write too many words in your first draft. Sometimes in drafting a communication we start with waaaay too many words, which is what happened for us. However in doing so we were able to identify the key points and easily strip it back to a sensible length.

Matching language patterns is a powerful way to untangle ideas within a list. In this case we had a couple of ‘random' points that we grouped as ‘things to note'. When we did this, we could see they weren't initially parallel, which in turn led us to question whether the ideas were MECE. Unpacking it further, here are the commonalities we noticed between the two items. They

  • both discussed invoicing which meant we had a common category to work with (or, as Barbara Minto says: a common noun, which means we can group them legitimately)
  • could be ordered by time, ie a current and future invoice (past was irrelevant, so we can see this was a complete set of relevant invoices to discuss)
  • both included an action, eg ‘is attached' and ‘is still pending', which completed the matching


I've included the before and after email below, along with annotations to highlight the changes we made. 

So, even though this was a very simple email, we were able to rework it and extract some useful learning from it.

You can watch the full recording and download the session notes below. 

I hope you can use it as a pattern for your own simple emails so you too can minimise the risk of kicking off unwanted email chains.


Kind regards,
Davina

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Pimples: clarity of communication = clarity of skin

Pimples: clarity of communication = clarity of skin

by | - Articulate your Answer (So What), - Introductions (CTQ), 2 - Develop your storyline, 3 - Deliver your communication

This is an unusual post but one I hope will help.

I just responded to a post by an old friend, Dr James Muecke who happened to be Australian of the year in 2020 for his work fighting sugar.

Look at how well he simplified and shared the message, even though he put the ‘so what' in the middle.

Let me annotate to explain myself before reordering to achieve what I think would be greater impact and of course offering the original.

Annotation to explain my thoughts on each point

Great (cheeky?) use of humour – Zits away …?

Demonstrates credibility – This recent systematic review concludes that “high glycemic index, increased glycemic load, and carbohydrate intake have a modest yet significant proacnegenic effect.”

Simple and visual summary – In other words, sugar => pimples

Clear takeaway that had me thinking about the young people in my own family – This might just motivate your kids to reduce their sugar intake …

Suggested revision

Zits away …?

A recent study might just motivate your kids to reduce their sugar intake …

In short, sugar => pimples

This recent systematic review concludes that “high glycemic index, increased glycemic load, and carbohydrate intake have a modest yet significant proacnegenic effect.”

Original version (see below)

I kept this to the end of the post so it didn't distract the flow of the points. Putting visuals in the middle of relatively small amounts of text means that even though the reader needs to ‘bounce around' to read, they don't lose the text.

I hope that helps.

Cheers,
Dav

PS – this might be a good time to revisit your negotiation skills given we are heading into Easter, which some might also name a ‘sugar fest'!

I do kid in that regard, but also encourage you to catch the myth busting negotiation skills interview I conducted last week, which you can find in the library.

I encourage you to take advantage of the free diagnostic too. I did it for myself and it was eye opening.

Can you tell bad news by email?

Can you tell bad news by email?

by | - Emails, - Understand your audience, 1 - Design your strategy

Emailing bad news has traditionally been considered risky, and often down right poor form.

But is that always the case?

This week I worked with a manager in a data analytics team who thanked me because I had given him the strategy and the confidence to do just that.

When unpacking that situation, it turns out there were some useful lessons for us all.

  1. Establish whether your particular ‘bad news' really can be shared by email
  2. Build trust first before going to the bad news
  3. Don't hide the bad news

Let's unpack each of these a bit further.

Establishing whether your particular ‘bad news' really can be shared by email

I still hold to the idea that we need to be careful about what kind of bad news we share and when we share it. But following this discussion it seemed to me that it is possible when the right ingredients are in play.

In this case it wasn't personal, political, ambiguous or earth shattering.

The manager (let's call him Fred) had shared a report and the audience (Bill) didn't like the numbers or the approach taken to get them.

This was quite a cut and dried story, not something at all ambiguous which gave Fred extra comfort.

It was also about a topic that was important but not of enormous significance which led Fred to decide he needed to avoid investing too much time in it.

Build trust before getting to the bad news

In deciding how to respond, Fred started with empathy, which helped build a bridge before he got to the bad news.

He could see where Bill was coming from and so started with ‘I hear you and can see where you are coming from'.

He then responded to the two key points as follows:

Point 1 – Thank you for this suggestion. We'll incorporate it in the way we handle this report next time.

Point 2 – We also had this concern. However, when we looked at our options for handling this analysis we realised all other options were significantly more time intensive and not achievable within our current priorities.

So, even though Fred was sharing bad news and Bill did back check with other colleagues to see if Fred's reasoning was sound, Bill accepted the outcome.

Interestingly, Fred said it took him about half an hour to write the email which amounted to quite a time saving. Before our program he would have called Bill, set up a meeting and planned for it which would have taken one to two hours at least.

Don't hide the bad news

Fred made a point in our debrief of saying he kept to the idea of structure and even called out the second point in bold!

He felt that his initial empathetic framing gave him the authority to say it like it was and that hiding it was only going to cause more problems.

So, if you are careful about which bad news to share you can do so effectively if you frame it to build trust at the start.

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

Watch out for a couple of ‘myth busting' interviews in the coming months

April 8 – Negotiation Skills Workshop

Program members have commented to me that what we do is more than communication: it is loaded with negotiation. This is relevant in both the content we include inside our communication and how we shepherd our communication through the hierarchy.

Matt Lohmeyer of Negotiation Partners will bust 3 myths about negotiating effectively at work.

>> Register here

Mid May – Communication Skills Podcast

Dr Sharon Grossman and I had a terrific conversation about executive burnout and how communication problems can feed into this. She will release it as a podcast early in May. I'll let you know when that's ready too.

How to get people to read AND reply quickly to your emails?

How to get people to read AND reply quickly to your emails?

by | - Emails, 3 - Deliver your communication

I realise in some ways emails seem a bit basic, or even hum drum. We receive tens if not hundreds daily.

And, if we are honest, we read them quite selectively. How many unopened emails are lurking in the bottom of your inbox?

So, if we are selective … so are the people who receive emails from us.

Tricky!

How do we make sure our audiences read and reply with what we need from them quickly? Here are three ideas to help:

#1 – Say something useful. Basic, I know, but often not so.
#2 – Use simple visual formatting so your message is easy to find
#2 – Insert tables, screenshots and other images with care.

Let me unpack each of those for you.

Say something useful. How many emails are never opened and not missed?

To be useful, think super carefully about your purpose and make sure you are adding value to your recipients before you hit send. In particular,

  • Think twice if your purpose is ‘so they know what is going on'. Ask yourself WHY they need to know what is going on? What will they do with that information? Do they really need to know?
  • Minimise the number of people you CC. If your recipients receive loads of emails from you, important ones won't stand out.

Use simple visual formatting so your message is easy to find. I am shocked at how often I brace myself to read emails that appear in my inbox. Here are three tips to reduce this shock for your recipients:

  • Include plenty of white space. You will note that in this and other emails from me, I allow white space before and after sections and in particular around my (usually bolded) main message.
  • Avoid underline. It clutters the page and makes the words hard to read, even though it does draw your eye to the line itself (but not to the word).
  • Only highlight the key message unless your email is long. If long, highlight the top line supporting points as I have done here.

Insert tables, screenshots and other images with care. A great example of this came across my desk this week, which in part stimulated this post.

My client offered about six screenshots along with five lines of text to explain her problem. However, she inserted the text in between the screenshots, which rendered them invisible.

To avoid that happening to you, I suggest keeping tables, screenshots and other images to the end of your email.

The only exception is where there is just one visual followed by a big block of text. If you add just a few words after an image they will be lost.

I hope that helps and look forward to providing more ideas next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

Free Workshop – Debunking 3 Business Negotiation Myths

Negotiation skills go hand in hand with communication as they help us go beyond being ‘just' clear so our messaging is also compelling.

I had the recent pleasure of meeting Matt Lohmeyer of Negotiation Partners who shared some fabulous ideas about business negotiation.

For example, he encourages us to NEVER say no.

His reasoning was fascinating, and led to a deeper conversation about how to shepherd an idea through an organisation as well as how to negotiate formal and informal deals.

>> Click here to register for this Friday 8 April workshop (8am AEST).

Why formatting really matters

Why formatting really matters

by | - Board communication, - Prose, - Templates, 3 - Deliver your communication

You may have noticed that I focus heavily on the substance of our communication potentially at the cost of minutiae.

While I hold to that, I do think formatting matters for emails and other documents as it helps you keep track of your story while simultaneously helping your audience navigate through it.

So, how do we get that balance right?

Here are some simple principles and templates to help both you and your audience to see the hierarchy of your messaging.

Firstly, some principles to help you signal which part of the structure each element of your communication belongs to. In more detail:

  1. Make the ‘so what’ pop off the page using white space and bold
  2. Use bullets and / or numbers to encourage you to break out your points and avoid ‘block shock’
  3. Break up sections that are longer than 3 lines so your audience can ‘see your point’ without working too hard

Secondly, some templates to help embed instructions inside your documents as reminders and also ways to minimise the need to think about process.

  1. Consider setting up some email signatures with instructions and formatting embedded within. Download two examples here that you can copy paste into your own signatures.
  2. Explore using ‘comments' inside your important templates to remind you how to use structure. Download a sample Board Paper template here which you can easily adapt to other forums. Select ‘view markup' to see the comments.

I hope these help and look forward to bringing more ideas to you next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

PS – Don't forget to register for this week's working sessions too. Go to the Session Registrations tab in the main menu to do so.

How to handle ‘background’ in board papers

How to handle ‘background’ in board papers

by | - Board communication, - Case studies, 3 - Deliver your communication

How often do you see decision making papers that begin with a section for background? And … how often is that background really, really long?

This is a problem on a number of levels, not only because board members and other leaders routinely list ‘too much background' as one of their pet hates.

Some audiences, however, have greatly mixed needs for background which creates some difficulty.

So, what to do?

I am offering five strategies you could employ depending upon your confidence regarding the audience's situation.

Where you are confident that the audience needs a ‘quick refresh' rather than an opportunity to ask questions and discuss the issues, adopt these two strategies:

Strategy #1 – Refer to and link out to any past papers to avoid repetition but still provide new members with access to the relevant history. You might say something like this: In last month's meeting we discussed four potential options for solving problem X (See last month's paper here). This is easily done where you are using an electronic paper system, such as BoardRoom.

Strategy #2 – Include relevant past papers in an appendix. This is useful when you don't have the ability to hyperlink to the past paper.

Where you are not confident that the audience will remember the content (perhaps because the discussion was truncated or you have a highly technical issue that is on the margins of their experience), include the information in the story in one of three ways.

Strategy #1 – Weave the messages into the new story. If reminding them about options discussed earlier, you might go with a deductive structure to allow more room for reasoning. Here are two suggestions.

  • Use a To Be or Not To Be structure to explain the options before making your recommendation, rather than just saying ‘Option B is Best before offering a list of reasons why you are recommending it.
  • Remind them of the problem being solved by merging Houston and To B or Not To B. You can use a Houston structure for your ‘statement', and following with ‘However, Option B is Best' for your comment and then leading into your therefore, implement Option B.


Strategy #2 – Use a Watch Out pattern to include a generous amount of detail on what's been done so far. This is always a useful pattern for when you need to change direction, but where your audience isn't keeping up with you, you may find it useful to be ‘fulsome' in your statement. The comment that allows for ‘risks ahead' can be tweaked in all sorts of ways to allow for necessary changes that you have just identified.

Strategy #3 – Add a section in your grouping to cover off on the ‘background'. This could be done (at least!) two ways:

  • In an Action Jackson story where you are describing how to implement something, start the first section with a message like this: “Become familiar with the options available”. This provides an opportunity for you to then describe the options as the first step in a process.
  • In a Pitch Pattern, weave the information throughout the story as you touch on key topics. If you are referring options, then describe the options in a deductive flow underneath the “We have a great solution” section.


I hope that helps.

Kind regards,
Davina


Related posts …

A script to help you get feedback on a storyline

A script to help you get feedback on a storyline

by | - Templates, - Templates, 3 - Deliver your communication

This week one of our number was using a storyline with their manager for the first time and was wondering whether there were ways to set up the conversation better.

In the spirit of helping, I have outlined some suggestions to help you explain to a ‘non storyliner' how to engage in a storyline.

Here's the draft for you to cut and paste into your own email or to stimulate a conversation as well as an opportunity to download the draft here.

++++++++++++++++++++++

Hi colleague / boss,

I have been thinking about X issue and have outlined my early thinking on a page for your consideration.

Before you review it, I'd like to explain how the page works so the diagram makes sense to you.

  1. It is a discussion draft. Although the ideas are I hope in a clear and logical place within the structure, the ideas are very much open for debate. I thought mapping them out like this would help us discuss the issue further so we can land on the final messaging.
  2. It outlines my current thinking in a way that may seem more assertive than usual. You will see that the ideas are anchored around a single message that is crafted as a point of view. The technique I am using encourages us to flush out the main thought and be upfront about it, before diving into the details below. As mentioned, the ideas are very much open for debate.
  3. Once we agree on the messaging, we can easily turn these ideas into a well-structured document of any kind. I would like to hold off on preparing the document until we agree the ideas to minimise rework. Focusing on the one-pager first will keep us focused on the main ideas and encourage us to ‘nail these' without being distracted by document formatting. My experience so far suggests we can save time this way.

I look forward to discussing issue X with you further in our upcoming meeting.

Regards,
Fred

++++++++++++++++++++++

 

 I hope that helps.

Kind regards,
Davina

 

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

Hacking requirements for a job application

by | - Job hunting, - Q&A Recording, - Templates

How do you handle being provided with 7 criteria that must be addressed in a cover letter when you want to offer a tight message highlighting your strengths?

In this short session, we showcased a strategy for ‘hacking’ requirements on a job application letter. This strategy allows you to give the potential employer what they want while making sure you also get to feature the skills and experience you wish to.

Including your storylining and communication skills, of course!

Download notes here

UPDATE: A few weeks later, we had the chance to work through the cover letter Andrew created as a result of our first session. I've included the recording below as it is a useful example of how to finesse the final product.

How to ‘amp up’ your message

How to ‘amp up’ your message

by | - Articulate your Answer (So What), - Templates

In a recent working session, we worked up a ‘soft’ sales pitch for a software company to deliver to an existing client.

Hiding inside are some useful lessons that will help you increase the value you deliver when communicating.

To illustrate the point from the get-go: which is more useful to you?

  1. The most outstanding lesson to me is the difference between structuring our communication around ‘categories’ versus around ‘messages’.
  2. The most outstanding lesson to me is way we can ‘amp up’ the value we deliver by structuring our communication around ‘messages’ rather than ‘categories’.

My hope is that you went with #2!

The first is a bland statement, and the second offers a clear point of view. Let me unpack that more for you using today’s example and a couple of other recent ones also.

Today’s example emerged from a visually stunning template that hid the messages

Today’s initial draft that used the organisation’s ‘classic’ template had some terrific things going for it. It was stunningly branded and designed, had very little information on each page and was visually crisp. It had super short titles like:

  • Product name
  • Problem
  • Team

These are useful categories to cover but hide the message. What are you saying about the product name or the problem? In fact, what IS the problem you propose solving?

This is something I see a lot across all of my clients, especially when templates are in play, so I thought worth raising here.

Using message titles massively ‘amps up’ the value you deliver when communicating

The ‘amp’ comes from delivering a point of view rather than just data.

This requires us to take a risk when thinking through our communication which might feel a bit scary, but which demonstrates we are in a ‘thinking role’ not just a ‘doing role’.

If we want to transition from operations – or deliver maximum possible value in our operational role – I suggest that this is essential.

Business leaders who compliment their team’s communication are rarely first and foremost focusing on their language use.

They may comment on the polish as an aside, but they focus on the substance – the value-add.

You go from ‘product name’ to ‘Product X is a great fit for you, or perhaps Product X is well placed to solve Y problem (that you currently face)’

Or, perhaps, from ‘Team’ to ‘Our team can integrate seamlessly with yours given our existing relationship’

This is also relevant outside sales environments, such as this one.

So, let’s amp up your own communication by using 3 steps to layer messages onto the categories
  1. take advantage of your ability to categorise at the outset by jotting down the high-level categories you want to discuss in your communication. This will help you get started while also helping you assess whether the ideas are MECE.
  2. describe your observation about that category
  3. now go further and draw out your insightful message about that observation.

Here’s an example from a non-sales setting:

  • Category: Current landscape
  • Information: We need to understand the current landscape from everyone’s perspective
  • Insightful message: Understand that the current process isn’t serving anyone’s interests

You may also like to visit this post where I talk about the communication value ladder. It offers more insight and examples to illustrate the sorts of communication that adds value.

You will notice that ‘category' doesn't even make it to the bottom of our value ladder.

I hope that helps.

Have a great week.
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.

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.