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It’s tempting to think that preparing papers and PowerPoints is a low-level skill mastered early in your career.
And in part that is true.
If you are a mid-level executive, you most likely have had some success in explaining how your project is progressing and seeking approval for more resources.
You will likely have improved on the examples your predecessor used to get there. You will also have added a few tips and tricks from the business writing and presentation skills training programs you have completed.
You may have engaged Board members in big decisions too.
But perhaps something is still niggling you?
You can see that you haven’t quite nailed ‘the magic’. Perhaps you are
At Clarity First we are confident that the missing ingredient is the ability to synthesise complex ideas into a single high-quality message.
Here's what that means:
Here's what this does not mean: Learning how to …
These things are a consequence of ‘nailing' your material and your message.
They are not the main game.
To extend your Thinking Skills, I invite you to explore the Clarity Hub. It's a fantastic resource for professionals like wanting to increase the impact of their communication.
It includes access to live workshops, tools and templates, a growing library of case studies, the incredible useful Pattern Picker and more.
Warm regards,
Davina
PS – While away on sabbatical I caught up with two long-term clients in person. One of them thanked me. He said :
Lots of people say they do what you do. But in my experience, none of them actually deliver on that.
Your process works. I can do it every time and I get the results I need.
I wish I knew about it earlier in my career.
It would have made such a difference.
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
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 always have too much to do?
It's not entirely surprising since our only finite resource, time, is at the heart of the challenge.
Unsurprisingly, this is a pretty constant topic when coaching people on their communication.
How do we find enough time to think through our communication? How do we know when to prioritise thinking through a particular piece … or when ‘smashing it out' is the right strategy?
It's also top of mind for me as I head off for a month away on Tuesday. Yes, a month.
So, today I wanted to focus on ‘time' and share some ways to help us all take advantage of it rather than be held hostage to it.
I'd like to suggest we can ‘hack' time to enhance our work and our life by harnessing two thinking modes. This might be an odd idea, but let me give you the high-level first and then work through it in three parts.
I'll now expand on each of these further.
Two familiar thinking modes that we already use to allow time to do our work for us. Let me introduce them both:
I first learned about these from Barbara Oakley in her Coursera course, Learning How to Learn. You may also find this free course enjoyable.
Several modern writers offer ways for us to capitalise on the under-utilised ‘diffuse thinking' mode to enrich our work and life.
Without necessarily using this language, they all seem to me to be taking advantage of diffuse thinking mode.
Greg McKeown has written two excellent books on this subject. The subtitles for each sum up the key ideas:
Cal Newport of Deep Work fame offers ideas to avoid distractions so we can focus properly when at work and switch off when not. There is overlap between his work and Greg McKeown's, but I have found both to be great reads.
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang takes the ideas further and discusses the increasingly popular shorter work week. Again, his title and subtitle are instructive: Shorter: how working less will revolutionise the way you get things done.
His thesis is that if we focus harder during a shorter time period we are forced to change the way we work which he says is a good thing. This will force us to become both more efficient and more effective. We will change the systems we use, the way we use our time and help us deliver more over all.
He reinforces the idea that the extra time off helps us be happier and healthier. The beauty is that our time away from the office allows our ideas to ‘marinate' while we aren't ‘working'.
These are not the only people talking about these issues, but ones that I have read and enjoyed. All offer ways to rebalance their use of focused and diffused thinking in their lives.
So, with that background I'd like to share some of my own thinking on taking advantage of these two thinking modes in work and life.
Firstly, in work, particularly where problem solving and communication are involved.
Many of my clients leave thinking about their communication to the last minute. They want to finish their analysis first and then are understandably squeezed as the deadline looms. Or they don't have enough information about the communication context to start and so leave it until they have no choice but to begin.
As an alternative, I suggest this five step strategy to help us start thinking early so we can take advantage of these two thinking modes.
Secondly, in life. Now, this one is going to be different for everyone as demands on us and our life stages vary. I could be general here, but the authors I mentioned have offered good quality advice on the subject so I'll avoid that.
Instead, I'll explain why you won't be hearing from me for the coming few weeks. I'm taking July as a mix of holiday and sabbatical.
My husband and I are heading away for a month to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary and to catch up with our 22 year old who has recently moved to New York.
We'll be taking the first couple of weeks away as a ‘proper vacation' and then using the second half of the break as a sabbatical. This will give us time and space to reimagine our life and work.
On my side, I'll be thinking about two things in particular:
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
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 so close to your work that you lose sight of what it's all really for?
It's interesting to me how I for one forget the obvious.
I move forward forgetting that what is obvious to me is often not obvious to others.
I was again reminded of this today in an advanced workshop with one of my government clients.
We were using a ‘pattern flipping' technique, which involves some fairly sophisticated mental gymnastics.
We play with storyline patterns to create new ones that better frame the story we need to tell.
This is more helpful to this client than most because their stories are huge and incredibly complex.
So, here's the thing.
To make ‘flipping work', I have to see storylines as a thinking machine that helps me work out what my message is. They are not a template to fill in.
To me this is pretty ‘ho hum'.
Of course they are! I use them all day every day.
But to see the light turn on in my clients' eyes around this was magic.
Here's what happened. They did five things …
Stopped being so literal and started to think. They began focusing on how to tweak a pattern so it suited their purpose, rather than taking a quick look at the favourite seven and saying ‘that'll do'.
Began to lean into how a storyline structure can highlight thinking problems. They could find and fix thinking problems by testing the ‘rules' that hold the ideas together.
Went beyond ‘clarity' to deliver ‘insight'. They started drawing out powerful and insightful messages rather than delivering something accurate and on topic but not impactful.
Saw how much faster they went if they started slow. Although storylining can be time consuming and mentally taxing, they saw how much time they saved by slowing down enough to think at the start.
Realised how much more value they could deliver. Less time reworking papers, speaking to people who don't respond to emails or don't ‘get' the message they are conveying. Better clarity of message. Greater quality of insight. Greater velocity of business.
I hope that helps.
Warmly,
Davina
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
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.
We talk a lot about the clarity of communication. To me that means how easy it is for a person in our audience to grasp what we are saying.
This is, I suggest, only ground level for powerful business communication.
The next level is to deliver a high-quality message. By my way of thinking this is a message that is not just clear, but which delivers significant value.
In most situations this requires a good degree of synthesis, and I thought sharing four key questions we ask might help you assess the quality of your own communication.
To test the quality of our messaging, we ask ourselves what level of message we have used.
I encourage you to review the three most recent pieces of communication you have prepared and assess what level your communication was at.
If you find very few level 4 messages ask yourself why and see if you can level them up in your next piece.
I hope that helps and look forward to bringing you more next week.
Davina
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
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.
I had a fabulous question this week: where do we fit ‘pros' and ‘cons' in our storyline?
That is a ‘ripper' of a question.
My answer is this: lists of pros and cons don't belong in your communication, they help you think through that message.
Let me explain.
If we provide lists of pros and cons for an idea, we are providing information rather than insight. This matters, because in taking this approach we
If, instead, we do the thinking for our audience, we will deliver insights that emerge from our own analysis of the pros and cons list.
Although more intellectually challenging, this is better for us and our audience. We know more about the area than they do and we don't miss the opportunity to share our value add.
If your audience is explicitly asking for pros and cons lists, pop them in the appendix. Focus your main communication around your interpretation of that list.
Hopefully next time they won't ask for the list, but rather for your insights.
I hope that helps.
Kind regards,
Davina
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
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.
I came across a terrific article in the Australian Financial Review today that quotes two of Australia's most prominent board directors, Catherine Livingstone and David Gonski.
They had a thing or two to say at a recent education conference, which I thought might interest you too.
They suggested that rather than teaching our young people to code, we first need to teach them to think.
I drew three core ideas from the article:
Livingstone said: “I get quite taken aback sometimes when I see something written or proposed, on the lack of logic in developing an argument”.
Gonski added: “We have to have a broadness and openness … knowledge is important but the analysis of knowledge has to be taught.”
So, while a lot of attention is paid to polishing the delivery of our communication, it seems to me Australia's top decision makers are crying out for a clear and logical argument.
To learn how to communicate complex ideas in a way that resonates with senior leaders, check out Clarity First. It's our speciality.
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
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.