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’ …
- 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.
- 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.
- Take note of the graphic below that highlights some of the problems with the original.
- Download the original, be inspired by these problems and rework it yourself.
- Review the recorded working session where we wrangled with it as a group
- 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
