Do you wonder how to tie together seemingly random ideas?
- You work on multiple tasks, so your update feels ‘bitty’?
- Your CEO report feels like a list of random things?
- Your analysis dug up lots of ‘random’ data
Making our communication make sense can be a challenge.
This week I saw a terrific post from an old client and friend that did this beautifully.
How to connect the dots in your communication
Ultimately, the key to success for business communication comes down to one thing: synthesis.
That’s the fancy word for connecting the dots for our audience.
This can be really tricky when we have a lot of seemingly disconnected ideas in front of us that we need to get across.
Updates are the classic, but not the only, example.
In the end it comes down to identifying the common thread that ties your information together in a way that is relevant to your audience.
For example, it could be that …
- A list of seemingly random achievements are evidence that you are on track to plan
- The four random questions you want to ask all point to you wanting to accelerate your progress
- The list of weird occurrences from the past period point to a buried root cause that you need to address
My friend did this so very elegantly in a recent LinkedIn post that you can read here.
It’s not a business communication but a fun read and a terrific illustration of synthesis in action.
He observed that he had ‘bookended his career’ at one employer with very similar trips.
Nice one, Douglas!
I hope that helps.
More soon.
Davina
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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.
