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

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…

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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:

• A copy of Part 1 to save for future reference
• Six templates for structuring your ideas onto a page

I hope you find that useful. More soon.

Davina

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