4 ideas to make structured thinking skills stick

4 ideas to make structured thinking skills stick

by | - Leadership, - Minto Pyramid Principle, - Productivity

Structured thinking skills are powerful tools for creating clarity in problem solving and cut through in communication.

Getting the most from these techniques requires a bit of discipline, though, as well as a simple strategy.

Here are four elements of such a strategy:

  1.  Start small, aim big
  2. Structure your thinking from the top down
  3. Use one-pagers early to boost productivity
  4. Avoid getting sloppy with your logic.

Read on for ways to put these ideas into practice.

Start small, aim big

It is hugely tempting when presented with a new technique to try to swallow it whole.

The productivity and work quality benefits that structured thinking offer are deliciously substantial.

Ideas like this are exciting. Once you have seen someone do it well, you want to do it too.

However, you don't want to fall at the first hurdle. Here are three that I commonly see:

Some people are overwhelmed by the volume of things to know, which makes it too hard to get started.

Others try to implement all of the structured thinking techniques at once and find that the extra time commitment is too great in that moment.

Yet more hold back on trying them until they have a substantial piece of work … by which time they have forgotten how it works.

Experience tells me that starting small will get you further faster, even if it doesn't feel like it. Here are three ideas to get you started:

  • Set aside 30 minutes each week to focus on getting better at using these techniques: Intriguingly, 4pm on Monday works for a lot of people.
  • Focus every small piece of communication you prepare on the audience's concerns, not yours.
  • Make sure every email QUICKLY explains what you are discussing and why you are discussing it before you deliver your one single, main message, or governing idea.

Structure your thinking from the top down

Significant benefits come from seemingly simple things. In this case, I mean identifying the right issue to discuss or problem to solve.

Once that is clear, it is, of course, much easier to solve it. This is hard to do when work is intense and you are being pulled in many directions.

I ask you to consider, though, WHY you are being pulled in so many directions? Could it be that too many things you and your colleagues are working on are ill-defined?

Untangling habits like this is hard. It requires you to add more work on top of what might already seem like an unsurmountable load. But, it's worth it.

Trust your instincts:

  • if you can't define the problem you are solving and why you are solving it in a single sentence, stop until you can.
  • If you can't explain your main message in less than 25 words: you got it. Stop until you can. If this feels painful, ask yourself how much rework would be involved if you don't. Would you be answering calls to explain yourself verbally? Would you be chasing people to act? Would the thing you need to happen simply not happen?

Establishing some conceptually simple habits and sticking to them will help you gradually declutter your work.

This, in turn, will give you more time to structure your thinking and create a positive flywheel effect for you and your team.

As a side-note, bottom-up thinking is also essential. It is just faster and less wasteful to do it after you have confirmed the right place to do it.

This makes your work more focused and effective. It avoids you doing what my McKinsey colleagues once called ‘boiling the ocean'.

Use one-pagers early to boost productivity

Everybody hates unnecessary rework. It is demoralising, frustratingly unproductive and slows down decision making.

I commonly see teams reworking large documents 10 – 12 times before a management team will sign them off. We have occasionally heard of teams reworking documents more than 50 times before a decision is made. Crazy, but true.

However, introducing some simple disciplines around highly structured one-pagers can radically reduce this frustration.

A critical hack is to involve decision makers early in the process by doing these two things:

  • Ask for feedback on problems mapped as issue trees first. Then invest in solving it, rather than afterwards when they realise they are focusing on the wrong problem.
  • Discuss a structured one-page skeleton rather than a fully prepared document. This helps your stakeholders find the big picture quickly and saves you also. No longer must you create pages and pages of prose or PowerPoint slides that you junk as they are no longer relevant when the messaging evolves.

My new book, Elevate, takes this idea further. It offers a framework for embedding structured thinking skills into your team's day-to-day work.

Avoid getting sloppy with your logic 

Structured thinking requires both habit and skill. It helps you create greater clarity for yourself and for your stakeholders.

However, it will not do this if you let go of the rules that underpin smart thinking.

So, hold yourself to account in using our checklists and other tools to ensure you do not get sloppy with your logic (and your results).

I am sure you saw what I did there logically?

I offer many free and paid opportunities for you to build your structured thinking skills.

A great place to start is my 10 minutes to better emails course, or to explore my new books, Elevate and Engage.

If you want to sharpen up your existing structured thinking skills, explore my Clarity Hub. It offers monthly masterclasses and a range of other tools.

Equally, my Clarity in Problem Solving course helps you better use issue trees, work plans and other classic consulting tools.

 

Keywords: leadership, leadership communication

 

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.

Do you scribble on books?

Do you scribble on books?

by | - Learning strategies

 

Do you scribble on books? 

When I went to school this was considered to be very bad form but as an adult I find it essential. 

Taking notes in the margins of books I want to learn from: underlining key phrases, turning over corners and generally making a mess of a book is a sign that I am loving it. 

I have even learned that there is a term for this kind of scribbling: ‘marginalia'

I have also learned that this kind of messy and manual note taking is essential for learning new things in all places, not just from books.

Research I read this week suggested that learning and mastering new concepts by taking long-form notes is a far superior way to learn. 

I thought you might be interested to know why.

The very fact that we cannot (usually) transcribe by hand what someone says to us in a lecture or a video means that we have to process the ideas between when they enter our ears and exit on our pen.

We have to sort, prioritise and synthesise the information while getting it down which has a statistically significant impact on our deep grasp of the concepts being introduced.

We end up writing down far fewer words than if we were typing but having far greater impact on our learning.

And if we want to absolutely master these concepts, we should convert the marginalia into a summary of notes in a journal. The act of summarising and re-recording will help us engage more deeply with the content, react and potentially create valuable new ideas for us.

Another piece of research even goes a step further to suggest that when reading books that teach us concepts (not just facts) we should read paper copies, not electronic.

So, there you have it. Going old-school matters when learning something new.

And if you come to one of my workshops, don't be surprised if I ask you to close your laptop 😉

 

 

Keywords: leadership communication, leadership skills, learning and development

 

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.

Do facts change minds?

Do facts change minds?

by | - Communicating complexity, - Communicating up, - Stakeholder management, - Writing

Changing other peoples' minds is central to having influence in business, however in his new book Atomic Habits James Clear offers some new insight into this vexing challenge.

He starts by referring to two notable minds which point in the same direction:

J.K. Galbraith once wrote, “Faced with a choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof.”

So true.

Leo Tolstoy who was even bolder: “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.” I hunch women behave similarly!

So, if that is also true, how do we get any kind of progress in business?

We must frequently persuade people to change how they think about things and, even harder, get them to change their behaviour.

Here are six suggestions from James's new book to help in that regard:

Understand why we hold our tongues when we know something is not true. He claims we don't always believe things because they are correct, but rather because they make us look good to people we care about it. This speaks to the power of the reward we all get from belonging to a tribe.

Focus on friendship first, and facts second. Given this tribal nature, he suggests that people will hold onto false beliefs long and hard if that means they can sustain their membership of a group that matters to them. So, finding a way to engage people in a new idea, a new process or a new behaviour is best achieved when you have already built a relationship and when you can frame it in such a way that adds to rather than contradicts the beliefs of the community that people belong to.

Find areas of agreement and build on those. If someone you know, like and trust believes a radical idea you are more likely to give it merit. After all, if you like them already, there is a greater chance of liking their ideas. So, use this to your advantage. Find your . friends who also have strong relationships with the people who disagree with you, and engage them in your ideas first.

Where disagreement is likely, find a way to introduce the ideas without confrontation. Interestingly, James suggests providing people with something to read – he suggests a book, but in a business context a report or paper might do – rather than going first for a conversation. This provides people with an opportunity to absorb and reflect on the ideas in private so they can incorporate the information into their own view before having a potentially courageous conversation from scratch. In sum, warm them up gently.

Avoid giving people opportunities to complain about things they don't like. This gives them an opportunity to talk about – and reinforce – their dislike for an idea, giving it more airtime than it deserves. James calls this Clear's Law of Recurrence: the more often something gets mentioned (even in a negative way) the more it is embedded into the psyche of the speaker and the listener. After all, how much air time does Donald Trump get? Instead, spend your time championing good ideas so they get the airtime they deserve and the others fade away from lack of oxygen.

Be kind first and right later. Here he quotes the brilliant Japanese writer Haruki Murakami who once wrote, “Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.” Enough said.

Click here to read the full article. And, no, I don't get anything from James Clear for blogging about his article. I just like what he says and thought you might too.

Keywords: design your strategy, leadership communication, learning and development

 

Please note, this post contains Amazon affiliate links, and as an Amazon Associate I earn a small amount from qualifying purchases. This helps me cover the costs of delivering my free content to you.

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.

Boards at risk of missing material issues thanks to poorly written papers

Boards at risk of missing material issues thanks to poorly written papers

by | - Board communication

I went to a terrific lunch today hosted by Let's Connect Women, where two senior directors shared valuable insights about life as a Board Director.

Toward the end of the conversation someone asked how executives can help Board Members and the conversation rapidly turned toward board papers.

It was fabulous to hear what they do and don't like, but particularly how they see poorly crafted board papers potentially putting them at risk.

Here is a snapshot of their comments organised according to what they do – and don't like – about board papers.

They DO like:

Encouragingly, Ann Sherry (Boards include Carnival Australia, ING, NAB, Palladium, Sydney Airport, Australian Rugby Union), commented that it is possible to summarise the key points from a 1,000 page report on a single page.

Both she and Patrick Allaway (Boards include David Jones, Fairfax Domain, Woolworths South Africa, Metcash), agreed that this was not only possible but also desirable and that they would like the purpose and key message up front in their papers rather than having to dig for it.

However, there was much more discussion about what they don't like.

They DON'T like:

  1. Being exposed to the risk of missing material issues because they can't untangle the papers to find them. This was a real concern and one we can relate to in many of the papers we see.
  2. Getting a brain dump of the month's activities. This suggests that not much thought has gone into the papers and raises the question about management's decision making processes, not just their writing abilities.
  3. Having to spend all weekend sifting through the papers to identify the core message buried ‘somewhere on page 25'. They would much prefer it to be spelt out up front and supported by the rest of the paper or pack.
  4. Listening to business leaders read through page after page of 40-page PowerPoint decks. They would much prefer the highlights only, given they have read the details before the meeting, and spend the time in a detailed discussion about the issues the paper raises
  5. Forcing themselves to stay awake as someone provides them with every detail they know about an issue. The word coma was used …

I thought you might like to hear it from the horse's mouth.

Keywords: board papers, leadership communication, design your strategy, understand your audience

Can business communication be thought of as a science?

Can business communication be thought of as a science?

by | - Communication, - Minto Pyramid Principle

Many people think that fantastic communicators have unnatural gifts, an innate mastery of a dark art that is so hard to master that it must be with them from birth. You know who I mean, those who command a room or craft stunning prose that transports us to another place.

In contrast, those with technical backgrounds are often told from a young age that they are no good at communication: they would be better off if they stuck to the sciences.

But, what if that were not entirely true?

It may surprise you that your analytical skills can be an advantage when preparing powerful business communication. Here are three ideas to help you make the most of your analytical brain when communicating:

  1. Think long and hard about your purpose and your audience before doing anything else
  2. Use your critical thinking skills to clarify your proposition
  3. Structure your story using a pattern

Let me explain more about each of these three here.

Think long and hard about your purpose and your audience before doing anything else

Before you put pen to paper, invest more than you normally do in understanding your audience. Think about who they are – think through who will make a decision, who will influence that decision and who else you need to consider. Also think about what keeps them up at night about your topic. How much do they know already and how much do they care about it? If you don’t know, find out.

The next step is to think equally deeply about your purpose and phrase it by finishing this sentence: As a result of this specific piece of communication, I want my audience to know think or do …. What?

As a CEO of a mid-sized manufacturing company (who originally trained as an engineer) said this week: “I spent more time thinking about where my audience was at than I have ever done before to make sure my presentation started at the right place for them, rather than just for me.

“In the actual meeting itself, we then spent about one hour out of three confirming we agreed on the starting point for the discussion. This meant that the rest of the time together was hugely productive and we were able to walk everyone through our presentation really easily and got the decisions that we needed to move forward.”

Use your critical thinking skills to clarify your proposition

Working bottom up to test that your proposition is valid is critical if you want to be confident that your proposition stacks up. Here are five steps to help you do that:

  1. Brainstorm your ideas onto a whiteboard
  2. Categorise them into groups, carefully assessing whether ideas really do belong together or not
  3. Look at each group and ask yourself: What do you want to tell your audience about this set of ideas?
  4. Articulate the highest-level message that emerges from that category in a single sentence
  5. Rinse and repeat as you go up the hierarchy until you get to the one, overarching thought – the ‘so what’ – and build your communication to convey and support that one, single idea.

Structure your story using a pattern

It may shock you to learn that there are a small number of commonly used patterns for effective business communication.

In spending a combined five plus decades between us (this too is shocking, we know!) helping consultants and other professionals clarify their thinking so they can communicate clearly, we have distilled what we think are the top seven patterns for day-to-day business communication. Here they are:

  1. Action Jackson for action plans
  2. Close the Gap for improvement recommendations
  3. Houston, We Have a Problem for explaining how to solve problems
  4. The Pitch for pitches and proposals
  5. To B or Not to B for explaining which option is best
  6. Traffic Light for updates
  7. Watch Out to counter emerging risks

You may be pleased to know that although there is plenty of room for artistry in using these patterns, it is not essential. Synthesis plus logic will lead to great clarity and great impact on their own.

Click here to download a chapter of our book describing the Action Jackson storyline pattern.

Keywords: critical thinking, leadership communication, pyramid principle, the so what strategy

 

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.

Three ways to help your teams communicate better today

Three ways to help your teams communicate better today

by | - Leadership

So, we’ve all been there, you write a paper for review and it goes through numerous rounds of edits and then comes back to you two days later riddled with track changes, comments and questions, often added by those who didn’t understand the purpose of the paper in the first place.

In our business we call this ‘the chain of pain’. As communications consultants, we’re the silent advisors who are tasked to eradicate verbal diarrhoea emails, death by PowerPoint and the chain of pain.

So as HR Managers how do we save our teams wasting thousands of hours of productive time going back and forth, having to re-explain ideas and spending too long just trying to get the point across?

We believe anyone can become a more effective communicator and we’ve worked with enough professionals over the decades to see that everyone needs ‘communication’ as a core competency. In fact, legal and other technical experts can often be the worst offenders especially when needing to explain complex and technical issues and solutions.

So where to start, here are our top three ways we work with teams from the get-go to help them tune up their communications skills.

Ask the right question
Working with a group of mid-level managers recently we asked workshop participants to divide into groups and plan a piece of communication they were developing in their business. About half an hour in, we heard one group have a ‘Eureka!’ moment.

In mapping their plan on a whiteboard, they had realised they had not been able to get management to buy into a recommendation for the past three months because they had not just been answering the wrong question in their papers but they had been trying to solve the wrong problem.

Use ‘storylines’
A business storyline* is a simple map of ideas arranged into a logical order and hierarchy. It can be used to make a complex business case or structure a simple email, for a presentation or a speech, for a meeting or a workshop, and you can use different storylines to use in different circumstances.

Storyline patterns are ‘the secret’ to structuring your ideas so you can succinctly convey your key points, enabling quicker decisions and better business outcomes.

We worked with a Head of Tax at a major Australian law firm who said that he would previously prepare 50-plus pages of advice, but now he can get a much clearer message across to his clients in five or six pages. The advice is the same, it is just much easier for the client to grasp it. The challenge, of course, is that this approach does make something that is very complex look deceptively simple.

Make it simple, not simpler
Often when we want to come across like we know something, appear confident and show leadership we can waffle, over-explain or fill in silences with a muddled train of thought or lots of over complicated technical jargon to sound impressive.

Coming back to what question your audience want answered, by truly understanding your audience and by spending a short amount of time structuring your communication your leaders and teams will reap the rewards.

By showing clear, concise and well thought out solutions to problems your teams will win more customers, leverage increased senior-buy in and stop haemorrhaging their productive work hours labouring over track changes.

 

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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.

Is Andy Groves right? Is writing more important than reading?

Is Andy Groves right? Is writing more important than reading?

by | - Communicating complexity, - Communicating up, - Writing

Like many, I have been impressed by the discipline that Jeff Bezos has instilled at Amazon, where important decisions are made after thorough discussion of tightly crafted six-page narratives. Bezos has been quoted as saying that

Full sentences are harder to write. They have verbs. The paragraphs have topic sentences. There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking.

He rightly points out that PowerPoint leaves room for gaps in our thinking. I would add that prose templates that ask executives to ‘colour in’ the sections rather than constructing a cohesive story are equally problematic.

I was, however, even more intrigued when I read how Andy Grove of Intel considers the exercise of writing ‘more of a medium of self-discipline than a way to communicate information.’

He went as far as saying that ‘writing the report is important; reading it often is not’.

That is a big statement, but he might be right. The clarity of thought – epiphanies, even – that come from crafting clear and concise communication can be golden.

The challenge, however, is to discern when to write to clarify our own thinking and when to communicate that thinking with others.

Here are three things to consider before you foist your next paper or pack on someone else:

  1. Does this piece of communication put forward a proposition that you can state in one clear sentence? As one company secretary from a large Australian energy retailer said to me this week, there is too much dissemination and not enough communication. The last thing that audiences need is more facts being disseminated without their relevance being articulated.
  2. Does this piece of communication lead toward a specific action or decision? If you are not clear about how your communication will lead you or your team closer to a specific business objective, hold off sharing it. Sharing at this stage will not only clog up other people’s inboxes, it will damage your brand.
  3. Is your communication crafted so clearly that your audience can get to the heart of your proposition within the first 1 minute? It doesn’t matter who you are communicating with, whether you are working in business, government, consulting, education or the not for profit sector. Every person in your audience is in a hurry. If they don’t ‘get’ what you are looking for quickly, they will at best ‘flag it for later’. Later can be a very long time away.

Keywords: critical thinking, leadership communication

 

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.

Getting to the So What just got easier

Getting to the So What just got easier

by | - Communicating up, - Minto Pyramid Principle, - Presentations, - Storyline Patterns, - Writing

This new book introduces seven most commonly used storyline patterns for business communication

How often have you invested significant energy to prepare a piece of communication only to be confronted with this most uncomfortable question from your audience: “So what?”

It’s one of the most uncomfortable questions in business.

Your audience asks because they want to know why the ideas in your presentation should matter to them and to the business, and they want to know in one simple statement. You might have spent hours, days or even weeks preparing, but they want a succinct answer that summarises everything for them in an instant. And you want the earth to open up and swallow you because you don’t know how to answer this question succinctly.

If you don’t answer this question well, all of your work can be for nothing. Early in our careers, we were both on the receiving end of this question and not ready to answer it. Those memories are some of our most crushing, yet also our most instructive.

What’s the solution? To avoid the embarrassment and frustration of not being able to answer that one simple question, you must state the ‘So what’ clearly and unambiguously at the beginning of your communication and then make the case to support it.

But, how do you do that?

Our new book, The So What Strategy, outlines a three-step process to do just that while also offering our favourite seven storylining patterns so you don’t need to start from scratch.

1. Start thinking before you prepare your communication: During this phase, we encourage you to dig deep so you can articulate your purpose clearly and also be confident that you understand your audience well.

  1. Your purpose should state: As a result of this communication, I want my audience to …. know, think or do something specific …
  2. Your audience should be broken down so that you are clear who the decision-makers, influencers and others are and what specifically interests them about your topic.

2. Structure your thinking: Here is when we recommend mapping your ideas into a logically organised hierarchy – what we call a storyline – so that you can articulate your main point in just one sentence and back it up logically. There are three things you should know about storylines:

  1. Storylines require you to map out your higher-level ideas so they synthesise or summarise the ideas within each section of your story. Doing this forces you to clarify your own thinking so you can articulate a more powerful case. It also helps you ‘throw out’ ideas that are interesting but not directly relevant to your main point.
  2. Storylines enable your audience to scan your documents quickly to identify key themes. This enables your audience should ‘get the gist’ within 30 seconds of engaging with your communication. It also enables them to find your key points quickly, rather than hunting for them, or assuming they can be found buried somewhere near the end of your communication.
    If you scan this article, for example, you can see that I have organised it around one idea (introducing our three-step process that enables you to answer the ‘So what?’ question) that is supported by a grouping structure, consisting of three actions: start thinking, structure your storyline and share your communication. This is a relatively simple example of what we are talking about.
  3. Storylines don’t need to be built from the ground up every time. Having worked with storylines for more than 20 years each, we have identified the most commonly used patterns. Click here to download a preview chapter.

3. Share your communication: Once the structure of your thinking is clear, this can be translated directly into any form of communication: phone conversation, email, paper or PowerPoint pack. The key is to make sure that the structure of the thinking drives the communication, not the problem-solving journey you went on or the medium itself.

 

Davina Stanley and Gerard Castles are founders of Clarity College and Clarity Thought Partners. They are also joint authors of The So What Strategy, released this week. Both trained at McKinsey & Company and serve some of Australia’s most respected organisations.

Keywords: books, leadership communication, online business writing training, the so what

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.

Getting email feedback ‘just right’ is essential (and easier than you think)

Getting email feedback ‘just right’ is essential (and easier than you think)

by | - Case studies, - Communicating complexity, - Leadership

It is easy to go to extremes when giving email feedback: either so harsh that your recipient is upset and is either so offended or angry they ignore your suggestions or so soft that they miss the point altogether.

This can be because we are either too cautious about upsetting someone and too aware of the limitations of the medium or because we are in a rush and don't realise the impact we are having.

A short article from Fast Company by Sara Marco of The Muse provides a simple formula for getting the balance right: not too hard but not too soft either: just right.

When providing feedback to your team members as they start to use storylines, Sara Marco's approach will work brilliantly.

It provides an opportunity to highlight what your team member has gotten right, and also what they can improve.

Without this level of consistent feedback, your teams are unlikely to stick with the approach and give you the results you need: less rework for you, more great ideas being approved by those higher up.

And, what I love even more about this article, it is written using a pretty solid grouping structure.

Click here to have a read and see what you think.

 

Separately, if you would like more ideas on writing better emails, you may enjoy my free course, 10 Minutes to Better Emails. Learn more here.

 Keywords: emails, leadership communication, leadership skills

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.

Winston Churchill nails it again

Winston Churchill nails it again

by | - Writing

A client recently passed through a gem which is just too good not to share. Yet again, Winston Churchill ‘nails it'. Written sixty plus years ago, it's fabulous.

I also love his closing remark: Reports drawn up along the lines I propose may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving in time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clearer thinking.

Well said Winston!

Keywords: leadership communication, Winston Churchill

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.

Why do most training programs fail?

Why do most training programs fail?

by | INSIGHTS

Learning new skills is an often pleasurable part of working.

Attending training courses is interesting, low in pressure, often fun and also quite social. Courses provide opportunities to network with others within our own companies or potentially others with similar interests outside our own company.

Unfortunately, precious little usually changes when we return to our desks after a day, or even a week away at a training program.

In fact, research conducted by training guru Robert Brinkerhoff demonstrates that if 90% of your company's efforts are in the delivery of training, 70% of the people will try new skills and fail.

However, if 50% of the effort is in the delivery, and 50% in the follow-up activities, then 85% will sustain the new behaviours.

This is why we developed the Clarity First Program as a month-by-month experience for experienced professionals wanting to turn their communication into a real asset.

We offer instruction and support over a time frame that niches with the participants availability and needs.

Here are a few things that we have seen work lately:

Help us understand the real problem that you need to solve

When working with a professional services firm recently, I was asked to help a small group improve the quality of the thinking in their client reports.

It quickly became apparent that the team was struggling with applying our clarity principles because they were using precedent documents rather than working from scratch.

Unless we either revamped the precedents or found an economic way for the team to work from scratch each time, the quality of their reports was not going to improve.

During Clarity First we make a point of using our live sessions to build relevant stories together, so participants can see our structured approach in action while also solving real, tangible issues.

Surprisingly often too, these cross discipline groups come up with breakthrough ideas for each other both in terms of the content of their messaging and the working approaches they can use in their own work.

Check in regularly to make sure the program delivers real impact  

This might include an email series offering participants regular challenges that can be discussed in working sessions, sharing success stories from other similar clients, or incorporating mini online learning modules to remind participants of core skills and concepts.

This feeds into the way we have designed Clarity First for individuals and also for corporate groups.

Rather than designing and delivering a ‘training event' we work with participants along their learning journey, for as long as that is helpful for them.

Change the way you think about your skill-building

Focus on regular, small opportunities to learn rather than participating in a ‘once and done' experience.

This way you can learn some ideas, put them into practice and benefit step by step along the way.

The alternative that I have seen far too often is watching people have a great day at a workshop only to return to their desks to a tsunami of emails and other demands which quickly wipe the learning from their minds.

 

 

Keywords: leadership, leadership communication, learning and development

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.

Are you too busy to deliver real client impact?

by | - Leadership, - Productivity, - Writing

It is always incredibly busy at the end of a client engagement as no matter how well you plan, how strictly hypothesis driven you are, there will always be time pressure at the end if you are aiming to deliver real client impact.

And teams frequently use this as the ‘reason' why the report that the client receives is lacklustre. After all, it is just a PowerPoint deck and that isn't what makes a difference for the client: “It's the ideas in that deck that really matter” they say.

While I can hardly disagree that it is the ideas that matter, I would challenge teams that analyse to the last minute to think again if they want to deliver real impact.

Teams that do not distil your ideas into a compelling message will not actually be clear about them themselves, which gives the client precious little chance of identifying, understanding and implementing those “ideas that really matter” either.

However, there are some things that teams can do to increase your chances of delivering real impact, even if you don't have time to make every chart perfect or phrase every sentence with the elegance of a novelist.

Prepare a straw-man very early in your client engagement: Even though you are unlikely to be certain of what every detail of your client answer will involve, you will most likely have a strong hunch about your high level argument very early on. Map this high level argument out on a page, test that it is logically robust, and use it as a guide for the direction that your analysis will take and for the charts you develop along the way.

Take an hour at the end of every week to revisit the straw-man: At your weekly team meetings, allow time to revisit this straw-man to provide your team with an opportunity to revise their current thinking, and a continued sense of perspective for their work. Be rigorous with your use of logic in these sessions and you will push your team's thinking while also helping to keep your ongoing client communication on track.

Build your PowerPoint at the end of the study based on your final high-level argument. Once you can articulate your final argument the pack will come together quickly. By focusing on the argument first, you will deliver a smooth and uncluttered presentation that really does deliver the client a compelling message with the ideas that matter not only present, but in an order that your client can grasp easily.

And then, if there is time tidy up the charts and perfect the prose.

Keywords: leadership communication

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.