High-signal communication
Presentations that land are magic.
You know what it feels like.
Your audience asks intelligent questions.
They aren’t stuck in trying to understand your message.
They are naturally discussing it with you.
How do you craft presentations that have a high signal-to-noise ratio that your audience can easily understand?
We want to make it easy for our audience to know what to ignore and what to heed.
As Nasim Taleb said:
The difference between noise and signal.
Noise is what you are supposed to ignore, signal what you need to heed.
Nasim Taleb, author Antifragile and Black Swan
How to craft high-signal presentations
High-signal communication is insightful and minimal.
Like a tidy house.
It also looks so easy once it is done.
Too easy, even.
Here are three strategies to help you lift the signal in your next communication.
- Hyperfocus on the outcome you need. Do not write anything until you have a clear brief that you can articulate in a single sentence. Make sure you ask who asked for this presentation and why it will help the business meet its goals. It is never ‘just an update.’ You can always use the meeting to add value.
- Use specific language. This helps you work out what you really mean. Replace neutral words like “impact,” “change,” and “different” with meaningful words. What impact? What change? How different?
- Rest only when you can articulate the single sentence that ties it all together. This might seem trivial (many skip this altogether). But it’s core to getting full value from your meeting. If you can’t sum up your whole message in a sentence, you don’t know what you need from the meeting … and you are unlikely to get it.
To wrap up with another quote:
Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.
Cal Newport, author Deep Work and more
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.
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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.
