5 Ways to a Catchy Style 

5 Ways to a Catchy Style 

by | - Writing, AI, Drafting, INSIGHTS

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.

 

Whenever you're ready, here are five other ways I can help you:

 

Elevate, the book – helps leaders set their teams up to set up a new dynamic across their team that will elevate everyone’s skills, helping the team get better, faster decisions.

Engage, the book – helps individual contributors prepare papers and presentations that leaders can approve without reworking.

Engage, the self-paced course  – supports both individuals and leaders prepare more insightful papers and presentations for senior leaders and boards.

Extreme Clarity, the 2-hour workshop – introduces techniques for structuring your messaging.

Board Paper Bootcamp, the 2-week program – helps you clarify and convey complex ideas to senior leaders and boards.

 

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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5 Ways to a Catchy Style 

5 Ways to a Catchy Style 

Being clear is one thing. Making sure they remember your message is another. Here is how to deliver your comms with a catchy style.

ABOUT AUTHOR: 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.

4 Ways to Ensure Consistent Presentation

4 Ways to Ensure Consistent Presentation

by | - Writing, AI, Drafting, INSIGHTS

This is part 3 in my new email series called The Executive Edit.  

Today we will be looking at how to ensure consistent presentation throughout your comm. 

Part 3 – Consistent Presentation 

It is sensible to assume that different communication formats require different approaches.

Emails and papers include more words and fewer images, and PowerPoint is the reverse. However, some common presentation principles apply across all forms. 

Changing the way you view your communication while testing for four specific things will help inconsistencies stand out. 

Here are 4 tactics for you to use: 

Try one or more of these ways to “change the way you view your communication”: 

  1. Change the “view” on your computer to presentation mode or print layout and flick through your slides or pages one by one 
  2. Print your draft on paper and flick through the pages quickly so you focus on alignment and other aspects of the presentation's consistency, not the micro details 
  3. Do a dry run through in a meeting room similar to the one you might present in 
  4. Check for these patterns that help your reader follow you: 
    1. Use a consistent visual layout throughout, (i.e., colour theme, font families, sizing, spacing and alignment)
    2. Present ideas in each section so they are “parallel” (i.e., “Design strategy, Develop storyline structure, Deliver communication,” not “Design strategy, Developing structure, Delivery of communication”)
    3. Use the same words for the same things throughout (e.g., a budget is always a budget, not a budget, a cost plan and a forecast) 

I hope you find that useful. More soon. 

Davina 

P.S Don’t forget to download a copy of Part 3 of the Executive Edit to keep on hand. 

 

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How do you craft presentations that have a high signal-to-noise ratio that your audience can easily understand? Here are 3 strategies.

5 Ways to a Catchy Style 

5 Ways to a Catchy Style 

Being clear is one thing. Making sure they remember your message is another. Here is how to deliver your comms with a catchy style.

ABOUT AUTHOR: 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.

3 Strategies for Being Concise 

3 Strategies for Being Concise 

by | - Writing, AI, Drafting, INSIGHTS

For the next few weeks, we are exploring a new series called The Executive Edit.

This week’s insight is centered around making sure we use concise language.

But first…

Need something to read over the holiday break?

Start 2026 with a competitive edge by grabbing a copy of my book Engage.

I walk you through a practical framework to cut board paper prep time by up to 40% while lifting quality—no more all-nighters or endless tracked changes.

Learn more here

Part 2 – Concise Language

I remember all too well putting the corporate newspaper I had edited to bed only to have a typo jump out at me as soon as I opened the printed version.

Not only was it there, but it seemed like it leapt up to hit me in the nose the minute I opened it.

What was happening here?

This paper had been proofed by at least three people.

We were all way too close to it, and we were seeing what we thought was on the page, not what was actually there.

Here are three strategies to help you avoid this and really see what’s on the page:

  1. Do something different for a while before coming back to proofreading. This might include focusing on a different task, going for a walk, getting a coffee, talking to someone about something unrelated to the communication, and then reviewing it again
  2. Read it backwards. You will see the word-by-word and number-by-number inconsistencies in a totally different way
  3. Focus on the most important aspects of language: Be ruthless—cull words until all of your sentences are 25 words or less. Culling forces you to synthesise your ideas crisply. Use active voice (i.e., “We recommend,” not “It is recommended that”). Notice how the more active version is shorter? Describe what data points mean, not just what they “are” (e.g., “We should acquire X for $1.23 per share” not “Acquisition criteria is $1.23 per share”)

I hope you find that useful. More soon.

Davina

P.S Feel free to download a copy of Part 2 of the Executive Edit to keep on hand.

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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.

ABOUT AUTHOR: 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 Executive Edit – How to catch errors AI won’t find

The Executive Edit – How to catch errors AI won’t find

by | - Thinking skills, AI, Drafting, INSIGHTS

It's the start of a new year and the start of a new email series called The Executive Edit.

Over the next few weeks, I'll share with you how to catch communication errors AI won't find but your C-suite definitely will.

AI drafts look polished, but they often miss the most critical elements: clear thinking, concise language, consistent presentation, and catchy style.

Let's start with the foundation: Clear Thinking.

But first…

Your next recommendation could take half the time to prepare.

Not by cutting corners. By changing the approach.

In this free 30mins session I'll share one strategy that senior leaders have used to fundamentally change how they prepare board papers and key presentations. And get approval for their recommendations fast.

Register now to watch live, or receive the recording. Don't miss this one.

Part 1 – Clear Thinking

 

Clear thinking is the magical ingredient in all successful communication.

But, aside of just ‘knowing’ that your thinking is clear, how do you ensure you have presented it in a way that is clear to your audience?

The best tactic is to map your ideas into a single structured page, so every idea has a clear position in your thinking.

The limited space (so long as you keep your font at an absolute minimum of 9 points!) forces you to synthesise the high-level points, and the structure helps you check the right supporting ideas are in the right place below.

Structuring like this helps you clarify your message before using language to fine-tune the ideas.

I find this faster and more effective than working bottom-up by editing sentences to extract the core messages.

4 steps to take:

  1. Keep your introduction short – no more than 15% of the total. It should outline what you are talking about and why it matters now. For short communication such as emails it may be the first sentence, for longer papers and decks it would be proportionally longer.
  2. Focus your whole communication around a single message that is expressed as a single, powerful, short sentence
  3. Organise the body of your communication logically around 2 – 5 high-level points that link directly to that single message
  4. Order those ideas logically. For example, my 4 C's are arranged in what we call a “grouping structure”, that begins with the things that I think matter most (the quality of ideas themselves) and works toward those that while important have less substantive impact on your success

Here are two things you can download to help you get started:

I hope you find that useful. More soon.

Davina

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Being clear is one thing. Making sure they remember your message is another. Here is how to deliver your comms with a catchy style.

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Let's keep our brains

AI might make everything sound brilliant, but it's often missing the point or contains hidden flaws. Here is why you need to keep your brain.

ABOUT AUTHOR: 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.

Use AI to communicate like a human

Use AI to communicate like a human

by | AI, INSIGHTS

If we are not careful, AI brings out the worst in our communication.

As 15th-century philosopher Michel de Montaigne said:

“Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener“.

The same can be true about writing.

If we are not careful, relying on AI in the wrong places leads us to focus more and more on the author, not the audience.

It becomes even more about ‘how can I get this out quickly,’ rather than ‘how do I enable a strategic outcome?’

So how do we use AI to make us better communicators instead?

FREE WORKSHOP: GET FASTER APPROVALS FOR YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS

Presentations are data-heavy. Insight-light. Hard to act on. Sound familiar? Even senior leaders get caught in this cycle. The problem isn't the writing. It's what happens before anyone writes a word.

We have 30mins. Let's fix that. Watch the workshop now >>

Communicate like a superhuman (using AI)

I’ve had a fun couple of weeks preparing for a presentation on Engaging Boards in the Age of AI.

Here are a few ideas that have emerged from that thinking.

Use AI to free up time so you can focus more on aligning your audience’s real needs with your communication objectives.

1. Research and generate ideas to kickstart your thinking.

  • Ask the AI key questions, eg: What topics do I need to cover to persuade x audience about y proposal? What issues does X audience need me to cover? What frameworks could I use to think through Y issue more deeply?
  • Set the AI up to ask you questions, ie upload data (into your secure environment only), tell it what you aim to achieve and ask it to ask you what it needs to know to write your presentation.
  • Use the information from these prompts, including the drafts it gives you as inputs for your own draft.

2. Rework your drafts for content gaps and to improve expression.

  • What have I missed?
  • Can you remove any grammatical errors?
  • Please improve my expression … the irony, right?

3. Remember the danger zone: what you think you wrote likely now isn’t what’s on the page.

  • Check, check, check … Copilot (especially!) and other AI tools I’m experimenting with reword even when I tell them not to.
  • Put the new draft down for half an hour, do something else, and come back with fresh eyes. If you keep rolling, you will likely not really see what’s on the page, as you’ll be stuck in what you think is there.
  • Read aloud to check if it sounds like you … Even if a better version of you, it still must sound like you.

4. Rehearse to strengthen coherence and clarity.

  • Try Microsoft Coach. Go into SlideShow mode and find Rehearse With Coach on the ribbon.
  • Present and review findings. See mine below from my first test to give you a sense of what it delivers.

 

I hope that helps. More soon.
Davina

Whenever you're ready, here are five other ways I can help you:

 

Elevate, the book – helps leaders set their teams up to set up a new dynamic across their team that will elevate everyone’s skills, helping the team get better, faster decisions.

Engage, the book – helps individual contributors prepare papers and presentations that leaders can approve without reworking.

Engage, the self-paced course  – supports both individuals and leaders prepare more insightful papers and presentations for senior leaders and boards.

Extreme Clarity, the 2-hour workshop – introduces techniques for structuring your messaging.

Board Paper Bootcamp, the 2-week program – helps you clarify and convey complex ideas to senior leaders and boards.

 

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
  10. How to make your presentation butterflies fly in formatio
  11.  Introducing my two new books: Engage and Elevat
  12. Implementing unpopular decisions with minimal political damage
  13. Overcoming resistance to coaching
  14. How to match your method with your message

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5 Ways to a Catchy Style 

5 Ways to a Catchy Style 

Being clear is one thing. Making sure they remember your message is another. Here is how to deliver your comms with a catchy style.

Let's keep our brains

Let's keep our brains

AI might make everything sound brilliant, but it's often missing the point or contains hidden flaws. Here is why you need to keep your brain.

ABOUT AUTHOR: 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.

Let’s keep our brains

Let’s keep our brains

by | - Productivity, - Thinking skills, AI, INSIGHTS

My neighbours must have wondered what I had put in my water bottle as I trimmed the hedge and swept the sidewalk this morning.

My sides hurt. I was laughing so very hard at the latest Hamish and Andy podcast.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, these are two of Australia’s funniest people.

Funny though they are, I didn’t expect their ‘jingle joust’ slot to be quite so on point with one of my current AI work dilemmas.

As their co-conspirator Jack sang in his jingle …

Now that we are living in the future
Everything can be done on a computer
Say goodbye to your mind
A machine will do the thinking for ya

 

Hamish & Andy podcast, Episode 306

 

I’m not sure if having everything done by a computer is a dream or a nightmare!

I’ll talk more about it at this week’s free 30-minute Pyramid Principle 101 Lightning Learning. Register here.

In the meantime, how do I help people when all they want to do is ‘use Copilot’?

Here’s what I told a group who decided to use Copilot rather than complete an exercise I gave them this week. See how it resonates with you.

Copilot sounds polished and smooth, but you must be able to evaluate the substance for it to help you deliver communication that is actually useful.

1. Copilot’s writing sounds so smooth it’s easy to miss problems in its thinking. I used it this week to summarise a video script and call out the key points. What it delivered was useful, but when I scratched the key points a bit harder, I found internal contradictions that rendered sections pretty useless.

2. Copilot lacks context, only summarising the literal words it’s given. A workshop group this week decided to test how AI would go rewriting their email. When I got to their group, they looked a bit bored, having had nothing to do for about 10 minutes, and I asked them to show me their draft so I could help. At first glance it looked a lot better than the original big block of text. But the thing that mattered most was buried at the bottom. Why? Because the original big block of text missed the point too.

3. Without doing the mental gymnastics of creating the doc, we humans don’t always know what to look out for. If we don’t think through something ourselves, we are not as tuned into potential thinking problems within it. When I shared the summarised video script with someone not as intimately familiar with the subject of the script, they couldn’t see the problems that I could.

This week’s free 30-minute Pyramid Principle 101 Lightning Learning will address some of these issues.

I’ll share techniques for evaluating the quality of your own thinking as well as what your favourite AI friend gives you.

I hope to see you there, and feel free to invite a friend.

I’ll give you my notes, though, so you won’t need to invite your AI buddy along!

Davina

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High-signal communication

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How do you craft presentations that have a high signal-to-noise ratio that your audience can easily understand? Here are 3 strategies.

5 Ways to a Catchy Style 

5 Ways to a Catchy Style 

Being clear is one thing. Making sure they remember your message is another. Here is how to deliver your comms with a catchy style.

ABOUT AUTHOR: 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.

AI can’t write your board deck

AI can’t write your board deck

by | AI, INSIGHTS

Since ChatGPT arrived, I have alternated between mild panic that my career might be over and relief that it’s not.

It is apparently very good at several things I specialise in.

It’s great at fixing grammar. It’s great at researching. It’s great at summarizing.

Oh dear.

What will we humans – me in particular – actually be for in this new world?

Good news.

AI has both wonderful potential and significant limitations.

Before I get to the details, I have three things to catch you up on:

  • Two new Board Paper Bootcamps are open, scheduled for different time zones. October suits Europe and Asia as well as Australians looking for an after-work option. November suits Australian and US participants best. More here.
  • Responses to the feedback feature in my revised Engage course are great. I have been testing Engage with a corporate group, and they love the new discussion feature. It enables them to complete exercises and receive feedback from me. Check it out here.
  • Cutting Through episode with communication expert, Paul Ichilcik is worth a listen. I asked my AI ‘friend’ to help me identify topics for future emails from this, and it was looooong. Check it out on your favourite player, or here.

AI can’t (yet!) write your board deck

Sorry, but so far, at least, it’s true.

Mind you, I did have a moment earlier this week when I saw a new board portal that included AI.

Let’s unpack what is going on here so we can get the most out of AI while putting it in perspective.

AI can summarize the material it’s given but can’t connect the dots between that information and your situation.

Only you can synthesize.

So, when AI pulls out the key ideas from a board report, that summary is only as good as two things:

  • The quality of the information in the original report
  • That particular AI’s ability to summarize without hallucinating.

Imagine this.

Leadership submits a report that contains a lot of useful information but doesn’t get to the crux of the strategic imperative behind their request.

Several review cycles later, inconsistencies in the background facts have also appeared as edits aren’t carried through consistently.

The leaders know what they want to say but haven’t yet crystalized it properly for themselves.

They might get there after a while in conversation, but it isn’t in the report.

Enter AI.

The tool summarizes the key points in the report pretty well, hallucinating no more than a human might.

Board members are rushing their preparation because the papers arrived late, so rely on the summaries.

What does this do to the conversation around the table?

Does the discussion tease out the real underbelly of the strategic issues?

Maybe.

  • Is the board relying on impaired information? Definitely.
  • Who is responsible then if a decision goes south?
  • What will the regulator say?

Leads to an interesting challenge, doesn’t it?

So, as much as AI can be very helpful in all sorts of ways (I use it daily), the higher-order thinking is still up to us.

It remains up to us to use our judgment.

I’d love your thoughts on this.

Davina

Whenever you're ready, here are five other ways I can help you:

 

Elevate, the book – helps leaders set their teams up to set up a new dynamic across their team that will elevate everyone’s skills, helping the team get better, faster decisions.

Engage, the book – helps individual contributors prepare papers and presentations that leaders can approve without reworking.

Engage, the self-paced course  – supports both individuals and leaders prepare more insightful papers and presentations for senior leaders and boards.

Extreme Clarity, the 2-hour workshop – introduces techniques for structuring your messaging.

Board Paper Bootcamp, the 2-week program – helps you clarify and convey complex ideas to senior leaders and boards.

 

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

RELATED POSTS

High-signal communication

High-signal communication

How do you craft presentations that have a high signal-to-noise ratio that your audience can easily understand? Here are 3 strategies.

5 Ways to a Catchy Style 

5 Ways to a Catchy Style 

Being clear is one thing. Making sure they remember your message is another. Here is how to deliver your comms with a catchy style.

ABOUT AUTHOR: 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.

Could AI make us more human?

Could AI make us more human?

by | - Learning strategies, AI, INSIGHTS

Yes, I’m going here.

AI is all the rage, and it both worries and excites me.

I am deeply uncertain when I hear the tech bros telling me that in every technological leap forward there will be more jobs.

I’m hopeful but uncertain.

This week I wanted to share a different thought about AI.

Is there a chance it could make us MORE human?

Before I get there, a quick reminder that the Early Bird season for the November Board Paper Bootcamp closes in 2 days … on 30 June.

 

If you want USD200 off, use this code at the checkout before then: EARLYBIRD.

Could AI make us more human?

 

What if AI could make us more human rather than less?

I was listening to a fascinating podcast at the weekend. You might have heard of it; it’s called The Diary of a CEO.

When interviewing prominent investor Cathie Wood, Steven Bartlett, the host, asked about her views on AI.

She’s excited by it for all sorts of reasons, but one stood out to me.

Perhaps AI could make us better?

That I hadn’t expected.

My thoughts have been on how useful AI is and how it could replace us at work, particularly younger people.

I’ve been wondering, for example, how people will learn the core skills for their roles if AI does it all for them.

My worry has been that AI might replace us or somehow dumb us down.

Cathie challenged me on this.

She shared the story of Lee Sedol, a top-ranking professional Go player who was beaten by AlphaGo, developed by Google’s DeepMind.

As you might imagine, he wasn’t thrilled to be beaten 4-1 in a 5-match tournament.
After he got over his initial upset, he decided to use AlphaGo for training, and his game improved remarkably.

This got me thinking.

I wonder how we can use AI to be innately better rather than be replaced by it?

  • Could we use it to learn new skills or to get better at something?
  • Will it remind us about the importance of human relationships, given it can’t, by its nature, ‘relate’
  • Could we become better humans, not just better employees, by using it to learn things quickly and as we need to?

 

I wonder. What do you think?

Email me and let me know.

I’m curious to hear what real people think.

More soon.
Davina

Whenever you're ready, here are five other ways I can help you:

 

Elevate, the book – helps leaders set their teams up to set up a new dynamic across their team that will elevate everyone’s skills, helping the team get better, faster decisions.

Engage, the book – helps individual contributors prepare papers and presentations that leaders can approve without reworking.

Engage, the self-paced course  – supports both individuals and leaders prepare more insightful papers and presentations for senior leaders and boards.

Extreme Clarity, the 2-hour workshop – introduces techniques for structuring your messaging.

Board Paper Bootcamp, the 2-week program – helps you clarify and convey complex ideas to senior leaders and boards.

 

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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ABOUT AUTHOR: 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.