Welcome to Part 4 in my new email series called The Executive Edit.

Today we will be looking at 5 ways to make sure your audience remembers your message.

Part 4 – Catchy Style

At a base level you want to present intelligent ideas clearly, so your audience grasps your message.

You don’t want them being like Homer Simpson, who said, “When I don’t understand, I just make it up.”

And, if they don’t understand you, they WILL make it up.

Being clear and then going the next step so they remember your message requires a whole lot more effort.

The most helpful strategy I know is to read your work out loud to yourself (or a pet) to check for five stylistic tricks that imprint your messages on your audience’s minds.

Here are the five things to look for. Have you:

1. Adopted language that will appeal to your audience? (e.g., for a management board: “We need to reduce risks in our supply chain by cutting the overtime maximum for each driver” rather than “We need to stop Fred pulling 20-hour shifts to cut the risk of him crashing his rig” which might suit his immediate supervisor)
2. Used alliteration and patterns? My high-level points for this document do both. I have four C’s as well as an adjective-noun pattern that forms a rhythm: Clear thinking, concise language, consistent presentation, and catchy style.
3. Chosen strong and varied verbs? (especially avoid variations of “to be” verbs, e.g., am, are, is, was, were)
4. Used examples and stories to position dry facts in a real-life context? (e.g., Do this: “Ned from Newcastle is understandably frustrated. He has to wait 10 days to receive his online stationery order, while Bill from Bankstown receives his within 24 hours, even though both live within 1 km of one of our stores”. Don’t do this this: “Delivery times for online orders take 10 times as long to arrive for Newcastle residents than for people in Bankstown”)
5. Checked for “the cringe”? If you cringe or stumble while reading your work out loud, you will know that the rhythm or language is off.

I hope you find that useful.

Davina

P.S Don’t forget to download a copy of Part 4 of the Executive Edit to keep on hand.

WANT TO LISTEN?

1. Risk Management = Change Management
2. Richard Medcalf – Making Time for Strategy
3. Baking Learning & Growth into BAU
4. Helping Leaders ‘shift testing left’ to derisk projects
5. A Case Study in Digitial Transformation
6. How to help a senior leader come back from a misstep
7. How to hit the ground running in a big new role
8. How to communicate during great change
9. How to turbo charge your transformation

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