Why small steps matter

Why small steps matter

If you could do just one thing to elevate the quality of your communication, what would it be?

This is a variation of a question I was asked last Sunday.

The sentiment is helpful.

Rather than procrastinating about a big hairy audacious goal, what is one concrete step we could take toward that goal?

How to move closer rather than daunted by its very audaciousness and the associated ambiguity?

For some, the idea of being a great communicator is an audacious goal. They know they need to take big steps.

For most, the idea of becoming a better communicator is ambiguous.

Using that C word at work, do we mean …

  • Writing?
  • PowerPointing?
  • Visualising ideas in diagrams?
  • Having challenging conversations?
  • Demonstrating empathy?
  • Telling stories?
  • Getting to the point?
  • Preferencing micro communication, eg chat threads over email?
  • Pitching ideas?
  • Being strategic about messaging?
  • Managing stakeholders?
  • Running meetings?

All of these things, and more, can fall into the communication bucket.

We can all get better at all of them.

But how much better is necessary? How soon?

And, how do we know, given few of us receive genuinely helpful feedback on our communication?

So, what small step will you take this week?

Here are three free ideas:

  1. Complete my free 10-minute email course. It shares the same principles that underpin great papers and presentations, which you can use anywhere.
  2. Untangle a difficult stakeholder situation with this decision tree. Do you understand why your stakeholder is being difficult? Is it your message, your engagement strategy or your proposition that needs to shift for you to make progress?
  3. Sign up for Clarity Hub. Still free this week. Log in and pick one thing to do.
    – Read a post about stakeholder management, engaging boards, or another topic that is relevant to you right now
    – Find an exercise and do it
    – Watch a MasterClass recording. Yes, you can fast-forward through it too. There are half a dozen options in the Past Events area.
    – Try the Pattern Picker. See if it can help you think through your needs and fast-track you to the structure you need for your next communication.
    – Email me with a challenge you face so I can share my thoughts via the weekly email or perhaps a new MasterClass

So, what step will you take this week?

I hope that helps.

More next week.

Warm regards,
Davina

 

P.S. – Colleagues have asked me why I am pricing 48-hour Early Bird Hub access at only USD19 per month (USD190 per year).

They ask because it includes such a lot of tools, templates, case studies and masterclasses and fear I will dilute my brand and somehow make it ‘less premium'.

I see this differently.

I see it as an opportunity to help people take small steps.

Sometimes the time is right for big steps.

More often, it's not.

It's a small-step season.

Inside Clarity Hub you choose how big your steps are and how often you take them.

All the while I'll use both carrots and sticks to help you.

I nudge you weekly with good ideas from my consulting experience that go way deeper than what I share with my general email-reading audience.

You get not only what to do and why to do it, but how to do it in situations like yours.

I also offer things that ‘vanish like Cinderella', nudging you to make use of them before they disappear.

Very soon, Hubbers will receive the first section of my new book too.

The Thanksgiving timing is coincidental, even though I am now very much enjoying a two-day break here in Seattle!

The Hub has been free for half a year. The email course will be free forever.

Sign up and see how it can take you forward, step by step.

How to shorten your communication

How to shorten your communication

Naturally, I want my two new books to be as short as possible, and I've been reflecting on the best way to do that.

It seems to me there are three ways to go about it, one of which is much more effective than the others. Let me explain.

Polish it. I tighten the language and work ‘bottom up' to improve clarity and flow. Shortening comes two ways here. I either tighten the language or improve the synthesis. I have been doing a lot of this, in part with the help of a tool called Hemingway. It's super cheap and I get nothing from sharing it. It's just awesome.

Snip it. Here I go further and cut out chunks that add no value because they repeat or are off topic. This is still a bottom-up strategy, and also one that I have been using with rigour. There comes a point, though, where this isn't enough.

Target it. This is the most effective way to cut. By taking the time at the outset to be hyper clear about the outcome I seek, I change the dynamic three ways.

  • I write less  
  • I know what to cut  
  • I know when to stop iterating and rethink


In working on what I thought was the final version of Elevate, my new book for leaders, I realised that I thought I was at the polish stage. But, I found myself struggling to polish, and frustrated by snipping and moving things around.

This frustration helped me realise I needed to get back on target. The draft wasn't doing what I needed it to do. It wasn't direct enough. It lacked synthesis in some parts and risked losing readers as the flow in one major section wasn't orderly enough.

Although of course disappointing, it is satisfying too. I am pleased to have a clear target to return to.

If you are in the middle of reworking a paper or presentation, where are you at?

Have you thought through what very specific outcome you need? If the draft feels ‘off', what is the best way to fix it? Polish, snip or re-target?

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina


PS – Corporate clients – ignore the deadline below – you have the full 6 months' Clarity Hub access

Instead, pop into the Past Events area to catch the Board Paper MasterClass recording and try out the Pattern Picker for your next paper.

PPS – Everyone else – The Clarity Hub is free until 30 November

You can also still catch the Board Paper MasterClass recording.

You will also find other resources to help with your communication. Check out the Cinderella area too. There is a case study you might find useful. It won't be there much longer.

On 1 and 2 December, Early Birds can join for USD19 per month, or USD190 per year. After that the fee will rise to USD25 per month, or USD250 per year.

Learn more here.

FREE MASTERCLASS – What do Boards want to know?

FREE MASTERCLASS – What do Boards want to know?

Do you ever wonder if Board members are a different breed?

Do they have different needs because they are different people, or because they have a different role?

In my experience it's a bit of both and a bit of neither too.

I will share my thoughts more specifically in next week's free MasterClass What Boards Want to Know.

I will answer participant questions while also covering a range of topics including
1. What to focus on in your papers and presentations
2. What does it really mean to be more strategic?
3. What bugs Boards about executives and consultants who present to them
4. How to make the most of your time with the Board

Those joining the live session will receive the first section of my new book, Elevate, which helps you lift the quality of thinking in your team's papers without rewriting them yourself.

>> Register here for one of the two sessions (scheduled to span most time zones)

Kind regards,
Davina

PS – Registrations are also open for my Board Paper Bootcamp. Learn more here. This will be an intimate group, and from what I know about the early birds, it will be a wonderfully rich series of conversations.

A fast hack for structuring your message

A fast hack for structuring your message

My husband and I were just talking about the new ‘synthesis' capabilities that Adobe is embedding into its software.

This led us to a debate about the extent tools like this could be useful … or perhaps even replace us?

Here's my take.

These tools will both help us and require us to lift our game so we can offer insightful points of view, particularly to senior decision makers. Here are four thoughts to help you do that.

Use tools like this to summarise – ie paraphrase – volumes of data. They can help organise the information and present it clearly, mostly by categorising the material. Be careful, of course, that the ‘machine' has enough of the right material to work with.

Understand that summary alone is not enough. Summary is helpful, but only looks backwards at what has happened already. This is necessary but not sufficient for decision making.

Learn to synthesise powerful points of view. Synthesis is where you connect dots between past experience, case studies, analogies and our own understanding of the present to create a point of view.

Leverage communication patterns. What if you could work through a decision tree to pick which pattern helped you convey your point of view best? You could take the data summary and combine it with your own insights to convey a powerful point of view with compelling clarity.

You might even get it done without multiple late nights iterating the message.

I shared how to do this at last week's MasterClass, along with my revised set of 10 patterns and my new Pattern Picking process.

The edited half-hour recording is inside my (still free) Clarity Hub, along with a fast hack for picking the right pattern for your situation.

>> Access the Clarity Hub here.

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

What to recommend to senior leaders and Boards?

What to recommend to senior leaders and Boards?

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 my upcoming MasterClass.

Now I am based in Seattle I am able to offer a wider range of session times too.

I hope that helps. More soon.
Davina


PS – You might also like to check out my November Board Paper Bootcamp. I will be offering one for the Australian timezone in February also.

PPS – I am still serving my Australian clients (mostly) remotely.

StorySlam: How emotions can be a double-edged sword

StorySlam: How emotions can be a double-edged sword

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.

Access the (free) 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.

Do you really need to INFORM your audience?

Do you really need to INFORM your audience?

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.

How to know if your communication is quality

How to know if your communication is quality

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. It's free (for now).

Who to collaborate with on important paper?

Who to collaborate with on important paper?

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.

 

An opportunity to boost your email writing skills

An opportunity to boost your email writing skills

I laughed when working for the first time with a senior team recently.

I asked them to do their pre-work and then come ready to collaborate on a modest piece of communication.

An email would be fine, I said. That way we can embed the concepts without being overwhelmed with problem solving.

After that we can move to solve bigger problems.

They followed the brief to a T and brought an email for us to work on.

Or so they said.

The email turned out to be a nudge to their peers on the Executive Committee to think holistically about a $1bn problem.

As you might imagine, we were quickly immersed in detailed problem solving and not ‘just thinking through an email'.

Preparing the ExCo then took a further three two-hour sessions!

So, not all emails are ‘just emails'.

They do however provide a hidden and often ignored opportunity to build our thinking skills.

My teeny tiny email course explains how.

In 10 minutes you will learn four key concepts.

It is available at no cost inside the ‘Start Here' section of my new Clarity Hub.

>> Access (or log in) here.

I hope that helps.

Kind regards,
Davina

How to craft great headlines

How to craft great headlines

Do you waste the most important real estate in your communication?

Titles and headlines grab your audience's attention, making them curious about what you have to say. Yet many documents I see waste this opportunity.

They either use one or two words that say things like: Update, Performance, Finance or similar. Or they run on and on losing me in their detail.

How to find the right balance? How to draw out something short yet insightful from potentially screeds of analysis?

I recently ran a MasterClass to help you learn to craft headlines that do justice to your paper or presentation. 

During our session we discussed how you…

1. Ensure each title packs a punch

2. Link your slides together to form a coherent whole

3. Hook your audiences attention

We explored these ideas, and more, both through the prepared content and in answering participants questions.

The recording is available inside in the Past Events area within the Clarity Hub.

 

Access here – https://clarityfirstprogram.com/clarityhub 


More soon,
Davina

How to cut the number of updates you deliver

How to cut the number of updates you deliver

In last week’s MasterClass I shared ideas to help you make your updates more interesting.

One idea I shared is the possibility of having greater influence by NOT updating at all.

It shocked some participant to silence!

We are so accustomed to updating our leaders and Steering Committees that we often don’t think WHY we are updating them.

If, in some situations, you sent an email update rather than taking up everyone’s time in a meeting?

I share this and more ideas about how to get the most out of your routine updates in the recording.

Access inside the Past Events area within my Clarity Hub – Register here >> 

This is available at no charge until the end of September, so please do make use of it.

I hope that helps.

Davina

 

How to prepare updates that don’t bore you AND your audience

How to prepare updates that don’t bore you AND your audience

Do you typically go onto auto pilot when preparing updates?

You might take the last one and tweak it a bit, or fill in the template?

If so, you may be missing an opportunity.

Updates present an under-appreciated opportunity to engage senior and captive audiences.

In this morning’s MasterClass I shared two case studies as well as ideas to help you make the most of your next update. I shared ideas on how to

  • Open with something interesting rather than the same old project description you have used for every update for the current project
  • Define a clear outcome that takes full advantage of your specific ‘update opportunity’
  • Win credits with your senior leaders for future updates

I also answer a series of communication questions submitted by those who registered for the session.

The recording is available inside the Past Events area within my new Clarity Hub along with a wealth of tools and templates for you to use.

>> Access here.

Clarity Hub is available at no charge until the end of September. It will then open for USD15 per month until 10 October when the price will rise.

I hope that’s useful. More soon.

Davina

Can AI write your papers?

Can AI write your papers?

There is much talk about how artificial intelligence (AI) can write for us.

Nikki Gemmell wrote in The Australian newspaper that ‘We scribblers and hacks are staring at the abyss in terms of the chatbot future roaring at us’.

Professional copywriter Leanne Shelton lamented its impact on her business. She expects her copywriting business to take a 35 percent hit this year thanks to OpenAI releasing ChatGPT last November.

I am seeing clients experiment with a range of AI tools to help with their work too.

Yet, like Nikki Gemmel, I am not concerned about AI taking my job.

AI can help the writing process and will stretch us to think harder and better but is not (yet, at least) a match for human insight.

Let me explain why.

  1. AI can’t make a judgement call
  2. AI relies on humans asking really good questions
  3. AI can’t explain how it arrived at its answer
  4. AI’s writing ability is surprisingly poor
  5. AI is inherently biased

Let me unpack each of these further.

 

AI can’t make a judgement call

Even when organisations (eventually) set up their private AI instance AI can only offer limited help. This is so even after proprietary data is fed into it and appropriate access permissions are set up. 

Let’s imagine that we feed the past decade’s board and senior leadership team papers into a proprietary database. We then add an AI engine on top. Leaders and board members could enter queries such as: ‘What is our company’s data security strategy’. The AI engine would then ‘read’ all of its material and summarise it to explain what the papers say about our company’s data security strategy. That is useful as far as it goes.

But what if we asked it: ‘How could we improve our data security strategy?’. Again it would summarise what the papers in its database say about the potential risks inherent in our current strategies. Again, useful as far as it goes.

Assuming the information in the papers is both accurate and complete, the summary may be helpful. I also assume, but don’t know, if it would place the strategy at a point in time or give all the information equal weighting. For example, a five year old data security strategy would be out of date. Would it qualify the information from that strategy as being from five years ago, or merge it with all the other data security items? Would it give these equal weighting? I am not sure, but for this kind of information to be useful we would need to know.

The limitations become even more obvious when we ask the question that we really need an answer to. What would it say if we asked it: ‘What is the right data security strategy for our company in today’s context?’

This is where the human comes in. Opining on what the ‘right strategy’ for a specific company is relies on judgement. So far at least, AI doesn’t have the ability to make a judgement call.

 

AI relies on humans asking really good questions

AI can only answer the questions we ask using the data it has access to. If we ask the wrong question, we will get the wrong answer.

In my experience, asking the right question is a major part of the challenge. 

So even accounting for all of our limitations, humans are at an advantage here. We can interpret the questions we are asked, which can be very useful.

If I ask my team to answer a specific question, and they realise I am off base, they can answer the question I asked but also provide me with what I really need.

They can do this because they understand the context in which I operate, which an AI tool does not.

 

AI can’t explain how it arrived at it answer

While it is fun to ask these bots all sorts of questions to see how they answer, they can’t explain their reasoning. This matters if, for example, we need to audit something.

Imagine if you reported to a regulator that customer complaints for a product like a credit card fell by 20 percent during 2023. The regulator will ask you to provide your evidence to have confidence that this is true.

In the current world you can unpack the data feed. You can explain where the data was collected and when, how it fed into a dashboard that generated the result.   

AI doesn’t allow you to do this, it just asserts what it found using its own hidden processes.

 

AI’s writing ability is surprisingly poor

I put this to the test recently in a conversation with a client. Brooke had been playing with ChatGPT to see if it could help her write a risk memo on non-lending risk acceptance in digital processes.

The result was both unhelpful and hard to read. It identified that operational, cyber and compliance risk needed to be considered. While the information was true, Brooke already knew this and the output lacked context.

As a test, we put the response through my favourite writing tool, the Hemingway Editor. This involved copy-pasting the text from ChatGPT into Hemingway, which then evaluated the writing quality.

It assessed the quality was poor and gave a reading age of Grade 14.  That means it was written at university level. It classified 13 out of the 20 sentences as very hard to read.

You might not think is a problem given many people reading risk reports are university graduates.  It is, however, well above the grade 8 that I recommend for my clients to ensure fast and easy reading for busy executives. In contrast, this article scores at Grade 7.

We then asked it to improve the language of its original draft and re-tested with Hemingway. The new draft came in with a reading age of Grade 9, which was a significant improvement if we can ignore that the content was unhelpful.

I have repeated the test and had similar results.

 

AI is inherently biased

This is where the discussion gets really interesting. I have asked Chat GPT and Google’s equivalent, Bard, to provide me with information about topics that interest me.

I find it is useful when asking for facts. For example, which podcasts discuss board paper writing, or perhaps what art schools offer weekend life drawing classes in my city. The tool provides a tidy summary that is easier than hunting through links provided by Google or Bing.

I worry about its responses that include opinion, however. I had some fun and asked some personal questions to see what it would do.

For example: ‘How does the moon affect women’s health?’. Chat GPT claims the moon doesn’t affect women’s health. In contrast Bard described this as a contested area and offered a list of areas that are currently being researched. In this instance, the Bard answer was more accurate and more helpful.

In contrast, when asking about sensitive topics the answers were both contradictory and troubling. Both Bard and ChatGPT have strong views about topics such climate change and the move to electric vehicles among other things.

Both began by explaining that they were AI tools that could not offer opinion before doing just that.

Given AI is a tool coded by humans, those humans influence how it works and the results it gives. We need to be very aware of this and evaluate any results we receive accordingly.

My conclusion is that although AI is a fun tool to play with and can be useful for finding information, it needs to be used with care. It won’t replace human judgement any time soon. It will, however, push us to get better. We need to critically evaluate anything it ‘spits out’ and lift our own game so we are adding real value not just regurgitating facts.

 I hope that helps.

Cheers, 

Davina

Using peer pressure to skittle dissent rather than doing it yourself

Using peer pressure to skittle dissent rather than doing it yourself

How often have you presented a new capability or idea knowing that some stakeholders are not in your corner?

It is rare to have all your stakeholders championing your success so a common challenge to address.

During a coaching session this week, a client shared his clever hack which I thought would be useful to you also.

When showcasing a new product or strategy Fred leverages his winners to persuade his losers so he doesn’t have to. Let me explain the situation and then the solution.

The situation …

Imagine you are ready to showcase a new platform that your team has prioritised developing over the past six months. This platform underpins features for a host of other use cases.

In prioritising this platform, other projects have been necessarily delayed. This was the right decision given the risk of rework on other projects if they were built without leveraging this new foundational platform.

So, in the room you have winners and losers: Those who are excited about the prospect of the new features they can now access and those who have been delayed.

The solution …

Fred said that he deliberately invites both winners and losers to the showcase so long as the losers are not overwhelming in number or volume. This has a number of benefits. It

  • helps the losers have a better sense of perspective. The winners help them see that they or their own priorities have not been ignored, but rather ‘taken one for the greater good’.
  • means the losers are persuaded by their peers, rather than by him. Their peers are likely to have more credibility as Fred is the one who made the decision they didn’t like.
  • reduces the need for him to go one by one to showcase his product or strategy to either group.

I thought that was a clever hack and that it might help you also.

More next week.

 

Cheers,

Davina

 

Write emails that are easy to action

Write emails that are easy to action

Emails are a constant challenge.

They are ‘everywhere' in our day to day work and yet often seem too small a communication to invest heavily in.

To help with this challenge I have prepared a short video tutorial offering four techniques for writing emails that are easy to action:

  1. Have an obvious purpose
  2. Grab attention with the subject line
  3. Highlight one visible message
  4. Visualise the message hierarchy

It's short, in keeping with the medium, but offers specific examples to bring these ideas to life.

You can access this free tutorial here >>

I hope that helps. More next week.

Davina

RELATED POSTS

PRESENTED BY DAVINA STANLEY

I love what I do.

I help senior leaders and their teams prepare high-quality papers and presentations in a fraction of the time.

This involves 'nailing' the message that will quickly engage decision makers in the required outcome.

I leverage 25+ years' experience including

  • learning structured thinking techniques at McKinsey in Hong Kong in the mid 1990s before coaching and training their teams globally as a freelancer for a further 15 years
  • being approved to teach the Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto in 2009
  • helping CEOs, C-suite leaders and their reports deeply understand their stakeholder needs and communicate accordingly
  • seeing leaders cut the number of times they review major papers by ~30% and teams cut the amount of time they take to prepare major papers by ~20%*
  • watching senior meetings focus on substantive discussions and better decisions rather than trying to clarify the issue

My approach helps anyone who needs to engage senior leaders and Boards.

Recent clients include 7Eleven, KPMG, Mercer, Meta, Woolworths.

Learn more at www.clarityfirstprogram.com

 

(*) Numbers are based on 2023 client benchmarking results.

How to hit the ground running in a big new role

How to hit the ground running in a big new role

Have you ever wondered how senior people hit the ground running in a new role?

I recently spoke with Cerise Uden about her strategies for doing that on the Friday before she started a new senior program manager role.

At the simplest level, we talked about preparation.

It got really interesting when we got into the detail, though.

Cerise shared her simple yet specific approach for quickly engaging and delivering for senior decison makers. We discussed how to

  1. Work out who to really get in front of early on (and when to do it)
  2. Fill any knowledge gaps you might have, particularly if the role covers new areas such as AI
  3. Nail down precisely what you need to deliver and to whom

You’ll find the episode on your favourite player and on our website here.

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

RELATED POSTS

PRESENTED BY DAVINA STANLEY

I love what I do.

I help senior leaders and their teams prepare high-quality papers and presentations in a fraction of the time.

This involves 'nailing' the message that will quickly engage decision makers in the required outcome.

I leverage 25+ years' experience including

  • learning structured thinking techniques at McKinsey in Hong Kong in the mid 1990s before coaching and training their teams globally as a freelancer for a further 15 years
  • being approved to teach the Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto in 2009
  • helping CEOs, C-suite leaders and their reports deeply understand their stakeholder needs and communicate accordingly
  • seeing leaders cut the number of times they review major papers by ~30% and teams cut the amount of time they take to prepare major papers by ~20%*
  • watching senior meetings focus on substantive discussions and better decisions rather than trying to clarify the issue

My approach helps anyone who needs to engage senior leaders and Boards.

Recent clients include 7Eleven, KPMG, Mercer, Meta, Woolworths.

Learn more at www.clarityfirstprogram.com

 

(*) Numbers are based on 2023 client benchmarking results.

How to reduce rework for high-stakes communication

How to reduce rework for high-stakes communication

Over the past two weeks I have shared two ideas to help you lift the quality of your own papers and presentations.

Today I share the third. It might seem like an odd one, but bear with me. It’s about velocity.

How quickly can you develop and deliver powerful insights that lead to fast, high-quality decisions?

In reading Colin Bryar and Bill Carr’s excellent book, Working Backwards, which describes Amazon’s secret to success many insights stood out.

The principle of velocity was one of them.

Amazon has gone to great lengths to maintain velocity in all areas of its operations so it can maintain its ability to execute quickly on innovative business lines.

Great effort is taken to remove bottlenecks and keep the teams on their ‘front foot’.

Communication is one of those areas. I see an opportunity to insert structure and discipline into the communication process just as you might any other business process.

Imagine this: Could board papers receive ‘minimal adjustments’ at each layer of your organization’s approval chain? Even better when the Board approves the idea the first time it is presented.

My client from the supply chain team at a large retailer, coined a term that I’ve borrowed: they call it the Gold Standard. Here’s how it works:

Someone prepares their highly structured one-pager either alone or with colleagues, before socialising that page with stakeholders. This triggers constructive debate around the big picture ideas and how they connect with the data. By socialising a one-page ‘message map map’ rather than a polished document at least four important things happen.

  1. Everyone in the process can review the message map and respond quickly with constructive suggestions to refine the thinking. One CEO client tells me he block-reviews papers and spends an average of 15 minutes on each paper. This is a marked reduction in the time he previously spent reviewing papers for the Senior Leadership Team and the Board.
  2. Everyone feels as though they have permission to debate the ideas. When someone receives a document that someone has obviously ‘sweated over’ they feel less comfortable about having the debate. It feels like a ‘correction’ rather than a ‘conversation’.
  3. The team isn’t wedded to unhelpful concepts and charts that ‘must’ remain in the document. As soon as we create a chart or write a section, we become wedded to it rather than the ideas it represents. We spend time trying to ‘fit it in’ rather than stepping back and looking at the overall message we need to convey.
  4. Less time is spent preparing prose and charts that turn out to be off point. Rather than focusing our energies on preparing polished drafts, we can focus on the messaging.

Once the ideas are locked in, the paper is prepared and sent up the chain for, hopefully, only minor adjustment.

In this model, teams focus on finessing ideas rather than tweaking words, fiddling with PowerPoint connectors or following a format.

This liberates you and your team from the awful game of ‘red pen ping pong’ so you can focus on higher order activities.

Our clients frequently see a 30 percent lift in velocity when drafting papers and presentations. This impacts both team members and leaders. Some teams, such as those outlined in the next section, achieve materially more than that.

Before establishing some concrete goals for you and your team let’s be inspired by what is possible.

Ask yourself: What do you need to change to get to the Gold Standard for you and your team?

I hope that helps.
Davina

PS. You can find the first two parts of this series on Communication Quality here:

  1. The most important measure of communication quality
  2. Is your communication insightful?

RELATED POSTS

PRESENTED BY DAVINA STANLEY

I love what I do.

I help senior leaders and their teams prepare high-quality papers and presentations in a fraction of the time.

This involves 'nailing' the message that will quickly engage decision makers in the required outcome.

I leverage 25+ years' experience including

  • learning structured thinking techniques at McKinsey in Hong Kong in the mid 1990s before coaching and training their teams globally as a freelancer for a further 15 years
  • being approved to teach the Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto in 2009
  • helping CEOs, C-suite leaders and their reports deeply understand their stakeholder needs and communicate accordingly
  • seeing leaders cut the number of times they review major papers by ~30% and teams cut the amount of time they take to prepare major papers by ~20%*
  • watching senior meetings focus on substantive discussions and better decisions rather than trying to clarify the issue

My approach helps anyone who needs to engage senior leaders and Boards.

Recent clients include 7Eleven, KPMG, Mercer, Meta, Woolworths.

Learn more at www.clarityfirstprogram.com

 

(*) Numbers are based on 2023 client benchmarking results.

Is your communication insightful?

Is your communication insightful?

Last week I introduced the most important metric for evaluating whether communication is of a high standard or not.  It’s not what you think.

If you haven’t read it yet, go here.

Today I move onto sharing my second ingredient for quality communication: quality of insight.

Let me ask: Do your papers deliver significant value to your project, team or organisation? Do they connect some dots to offer a new idea that adds value to the strategy, returns, processes or perhaps by reducing risk?

This relates to synthesis, which is where both the challenge and opportunity lie when improving high-stakes communication.

In his 2005 book A Whole New Mind best-selling author Daniel Pink commented synthesis as the ‘killer app’ in business in what he calls the new Conceptual Age.

 

“What’s in greatest demand today isn’t analysis but synthesis – seeing the big picture and crossing boundaries, being able to combine disparate pieces into an arresting new whole”.

 

Or more simply, the formula we used at McKinsey is that synthesis is summary + insight.

SYNTHESIS = SUMMARY + INSIGHT

Without wanting to be too pointy about it, Daniel Pink was right. Most people can summarise. So can natural language processing tools such as ChatGPT, if given the right data set.

The real value we humans bring is to connect that factual summary with our own insights stemming from our understanding of the context.

So, to offer high-quality, valuable insights, you need to be technically strong and in touch with commercial and stakeholder imperatives.

This means that you and your leaders need to work together. You need a common strategy for tying together complex ideas to make them seem simple.

You need a structured way to collaborate when synthesising your message.

So, ask yourself about the consequences of delivering poor-quality insights. How well thought through are the ideas your team shares with you?

When it works, individuals and teams get the balance right between the import of the message, the value it delivers and the time they invest to prepare it.

And, as I mentioned last week, they do it with minimal rework.

This brings me to my third ingredient, velocity, which I’ll talk about next week.

Cheers,

Davina

 

 

RELATED POSTS

PRESENTED BY DAVINA STANLEY

I love what I do.

I help senior leaders and their teams prepare high-quality papers and presentations in a fraction of the time.

This involves 'nailing' the message that will quickly engage decision makers in the required outcome.

I leverage 25+ years' experience including

  • learning structured thinking techniques at McKinsey in Hong Kong in the mid 1990s before coaching and training their teams globally as a freelancer for a further 15 years
  • being approved to teach the Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto in 2009
  • helping CEOs, C-suite leaders and their reports deeply understand their stakeholder needs and communicate accordingly
  • seeing leaders cut the number of times they review major papers by ~30% and teams cut the amount of time they take to prepare major papers by ~20%*
  • watching senior meetings focus on substantive discussions and better decisions rather than trying to clarify the issue

My approach helps anyone who needs to engage senior leaders and Boards.

Recent clients include 7Eleven, KPMG, Mercer, Meta, Woolworths.

Learn more at www.clarityfirstprogram.com

 

(*) Numbers are based on 2023 client benchmarking results.

The most important measure of communication quality

The most important measure of communication quality

 

When trying to work out if your communication is any good or not, do you wonder what is the most important measure of success?

I have an unusual take on it.

When it comes to important papers, my hunch is that the single most important needle to move is the amount of time you and your colleagues spend reworking them.

If there is little rework, then they are fit for purpose. If there is much, it’s not a good sign for anyone.

That single measure may be enough. You may, however, like to dig a little deeper.

This week I’d like to offer the first of three measures you can use. Let me give you a preview and then dive into today’s topic: Clarity.

  1. Clarity – Can you glean the core messages within 30 seconds of opening a paper or presentation?
  2. Quality – How valuable are the insights?
  3. Velocity – How quickly can your team develop and deliver powerful insights that lead to better decisions?

Let me now dig into the first of these. Can you glean the core messages within 30 seconds of opening a paper or presentation?

This is where we ask whether the communication misses the mark. Are you  

  • Writing Agatha Christie reports that leave the big idea until the end
  • Asking your decision makers to conduct Easter Egg Hunts to find the insights or
  • Delivering papers that are either wafer thin or worse. They miss the point altogether.

We ask how well the messages jump off the page (or out of the mouth) so that your audience can grasp them quickly. How easy are they to find in the paper, presentation, discussion, email or other communication form?

Clarity helps us quickly see what the message is and check whether it does what is needed.

As one board director suggested recently, she would rather read papers that did not require him to conduct an Easter egg hunt. She does not enjoy hunting around ‘the garden’ of the paper to find where the insights are hidden.

She wants them to pop off the page so she can quickly skim the paper to decide how to read it.

Try asking how often a reader can glean the message within 30 seconds of opening the paper. You can also apply this to emails and other communication too.

While clarity is critical, though, it’s not enough. To quote one of my ‘crustier’ clients, the head of credit risk at a large bank:

“The team can now craft much clearer messages, which is very useful. But how do we stop them putting ‘rubbish’ in the boxes?”.

This leads me to my next dimension: quality of insight, which I’ll dive into next week.

Cheers, 

Davina

 

RELATED POSTS

PRESENTED BY DAVINA STANLEY

I love what I do.

I help senior leaders and their teams prepare high-quality papers and presentations in a fraction of the time.

This involves 'nailing' the message that will quickly engage decision makers in the required outcome.

I leverage 25+ years' experience including

  • learning structured thinking techniques at McKinsey in Hong Kong in the mid 1990s before coaching and training their teams globally as a freelancer for a further 15 years
  • being approved to teach the Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto in 2009
  • helping CEOs, C-suite leaders and their reports deeply understand their stakeholder needs and communicate accordingly
  • seeing leaders cut the number of times they review major papers by ~30% and teams cut the amount of time they take to prepare major papers by ~20%*
  • watching senior meetings focus on substantive discussions and better decisions rather than trying to clarify the issue

My approach helps anyone who needs to engage senior leaders and Boards.

Recent clients include 7Eleven, KPMG, Mercer, Meta, Woolworths.

Learn more at www.clarityfirstprogram.com

 

(*) Numbers are based on 2023 client benchmarking results.