What to recommend to senior leaders and Boards?

What to recommend to senior leaders and Boards?

by | - Board communication, - Stakeholder management

Do you wonder what to write those boxes in the admin section of your senior paper or presentation?

There will be the basics like date, author, paper type, attachments etc.

Buried in the middle of this list will be one that says ‘Recommendation'.

I'd like to help you deliver valuable insight right from the get go rather than following administrative protocol for its own sake. Here is what not to do and a better alternative.

Don't say nothing …

Don't repeat what's in the ‘paper type' box that asks whether it is a paper to offer a recommendation, stimulate a discussion or for noting.

An example would be to say:

That the Committee NOTE this report

This only leaves them asking … but what is in the report? What does it say?

Offer insight right from the get go …

Your audience is hungry to know what you think. They want to know your insights.

Here is an example:

That the Committee NOTE that the risks for ABC issue remain within risk appetite across all dimensions, except Area 1 and Area 2 which have been affected by DEF issue.

This approach addresses the formality by explaining that the paper be noted – and adds value by explaining what in particular they are noting.

To get more ideas on how to better engage senior leaders and Boards, join the Clarity Hub. It's low on cost but big on resources, all designed to help you lift the quality of your communication and board papers. Learn more here >>

I hope that helps. More soon.
Davina


PS – You might also like to check out my  Board Paper Bootcamp. I will be offering one cohorts several times a year, suitable for a range of timezones.

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StorySlam: How emotions can be a double-edged sword

StorySlam: How emotions can be a double-edged sword

by | - Thinking skills

This week's StorySlam MasterClass surfaced several important issues, including the use of emotions when persuading others.

It turns out that using emotion is a double-edged sword.

  • If used well, they can help your audience grasp and engage more with your message.
  • If over used, they make your audience skeptical.
  • If under used, they switch your audience off.

The discussion in the last 15 minutes of this week's MasterClass flushes this out more fully.

Join the Clarity Hub to find the MasterClass recording in the Past Events area. You will find the exercise as a download alongside the recording so you can practice your structured thinking skills too.

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

PS – I am proofing the last section of the first of my two upcoming books: Engage: How to lift the quality of your team's board papers without rewriting them yoursel. Learn more here.

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Do you really need to INFORM your audience?

Do you really need to INFORM your audience?

by | - Board communication, - Communicating complexity, - Communicating up, - Stakeholder management

I write this to you having just wrapped up a coaching session where a perennial question arose.

My client suggested that the paper we were discussing needed to inform her peers.

But, did it really?

Why did she need to inform her peers about this particular set of facts?

It turned out the real objective was to build trust that the current efforts to increase the time employees spend in the office were working.

Once it was clear that trust rather than knowledge was the goal, we could make the messaging much more focused and engaging.

So, when you next think that you need your audience to know something, ask why they need to know it. Here are two steps to take

First, check why you need to inform your audience. Could it be to gain the following from your audience?

  1. Action: Undertake a specific task or set of tasks where your audience understands why they need to be undertaken.
  2. Implement: Put something into effect where you explain what to do but the audience decides how to do it.
  3. Support: Help to someone, potentially you, in undertaking an activity without undertaking the activity themselves.
  4. Trust: To have confidence in a situation.

If none of those fit, consider whether one of these ‘knowing' definitions fits.

  1. Know: Be aware of something so your stakeholder can factor this knowledge into their thinking and action.
  2. Understand: Fully appreciate something so you can then use that understanding to decide or act.

Sometimes it is true that your audience does ‘just' need to know something. I find however that nine times out of ten, there is another real reason. When we clarify that reason, the communication becomes more useful and the audience more engaged.

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

 

PS – In my upcoming Board Paper Bootcamp we will cover strategies for discerning your real outcome so you can then be more effective at engaging senior leaders and Boards. Learn more here.

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How to know if your communication is quality

How to know if your communication is quality

by | - Board communication, - Communicating complexity, - Leadership communication, - Synthesis, Board Papers

Do you ever wonder if your papers and presentations hit the mark, or if your stakeholders are just being nice?

Today one of my clients laughed and said that at the end of our program, he now has a very different view of what good looks like.

After learning new strategies for clarifying the desired outcome for his communication and then how to structure a message that achieves that outcome, he sees the world differently.

So, I thought I'd share with you the top five questions that he and his colleagues now ask when reviewing their papers and presentations. Does the communication ….

S – Set the scene quickly by drawing the audience toward one insightful message?
C – Convey the right balance of strategic and operational detail?
O – Organise the ideas in a well-structured hierarchy?
R – Ready the audience for a productive discussion?
E – Engage the audience using a medium, style and tone that suits them?

This is one of the frameworks we'll focus on in my upcoming Board Paper Bootcamp programs.

I will host one for the European and American time zones during October and another for Australian and American time zones in March.

>> Learn more here.

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

PS – You can learn more about this framework inside the Clarity Hub too.

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Who to collaborate with on important paper?

Who to collaborate with on important paper?

by | - Board communication, - Leadership communication, - Stakeholder management

When people learn to prepare papers and presentations for senior audiences they often focus on improving ‘writing' and ‘slide making' skills.

These are useful and often taught as though the paper or presentation is prepared by one individual.

However, in my experience this is often not the case.

Engaging senior audiences to make a recommendation or to update is a collaborative effort.

So, how to collaborate?

The first step is to decide who you should involve in the process, particularly at the initial scoping session.

I recommend inviting everyone who will have a role in preparing the paper, including more junior team members who may only focus on discrete sections.

You may also think a bit expansively to include people with these three Es:

  • Expertise: Are they familiar with the problem or have a usefully different perspective? Most likely they will have been involved in working on the issue, but it may be useful to think more broadly for higher stakes communication.
  • Evaluative ability: Do they think deeply about things, and are they a smart thinker? Sometimes it helps to have people outside of the context who bring raw intelligence to the effort. Involving them may be a useful way to help them learn more about the issue while also contributing to the communication.
  • Elevation: Do they have sufficient visibility of the strategic environment to help link your narrative to the broader business objectives? You may bring sufficient visibility on your own, or equally, you may bring someone senior into the session to share their perspective. It could be the person who commissioned the paper, someone who owns the relevant strategy or someone who knows the stakeholder group well.

In briefing the whole team, you will increase the chances of clarifying a message that hits the right notes with less effort from you all.

I hope that helps.

Kind regards,
Davina

 

PS – We will go into this and much more in my upcoming Board Paper Bootcamp. Learn more here.

 

PPS – In case you missed them, you might enjoy some of our past episodes

  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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