Develop your storyline | Clarity First Program
In last week's post I talked about a powerful consulting framework called ‘MECE'.
This week I wanted to take that conversation one step further to share an idea to help you be MECE when preparing your communication.
This involves challenging the content of your storyline so you can be confident that your messaging is robust.
To that end, there is an abundance of mental models that we can use.
A book I began reading over the weekend introduces nine of these, some of which I use to help me test whether the ideas within my storyline stack up.
For example, necessity vs sufficiency
It is necessary to be able to write to publish a book, but being able to write is not sufficient to be an author of JK Rowling stature.
It is necessary to manage a process well to deliver an outcome, but managing a process well is unlikely sufficient to ‘shoot the lights out'.
It is necessary to think clearly to communicate clearly, but thinking clearly is not sufficient to communicate with great insight.
The challenge we must be aware of when preparing our communication is whether our ideas are more than just necessary, but also sufficient to do the job.
This easy to read book includes a range of other very powerful models, and I'd encourage you to take a look.
It is written by Shane Parrish of the Knowledge Project podcast and the Farnham St blog, and sponsored by Automattic so that the price is kept low as a community service.
* If you do decide to purchase a copy, I will receive a small commission
Why writers need to educate readers on how to read their communication
by Davina | - Minto Pyramid Principle, - Writing
3 tips for THINKING for yourself but WRITING for your audience
When working with a technical team recently I was reminded how most of us ‘write to think' at least some of the time, if not a lot of the time.
This is particularly the case when working with complex material.
Here's what happens: we sit down to write and map out and fill in our initial crude structure piece by piece. However, while we are doing that our ideas clarify and we become increasingly clear about what we need to convey. By the end of the paper, we are very clear.
However, here's the problem: the writer was only clear about what they wanted to say by the time they got to the end of their document, not at the start.
And what does the reader see first? The start.
And, just when you thought that you could cut and paste the last ‘aha' paragraph or so to the front of your document to fix this problem, think again.
Whether the ‘aha' paragraph is at the front or the back of your document your poor reader is left to walk alongside your own thinking journey to try unpick not only the writer's key insight but how the writer got there.
Here are three suggestions that will help you avoid the “write to think” trap when you next write something so that you provide your reader with a compelling argument that is aimed at them, not at you.
Firstly, begin writing knowing that you are writing for yourself, not for somebody else. If by chance your first draft is fabulous, great: but this is unlikely to be the norm.
Secondly, prepare your early drafts as a note to yourself, not in the final deliverable format. This way you avoid any confusion about your audience as well as the risk of sending something important out before it is really ready. For example, in drafting this post I am writing it in our beta site so that I don't share it with you before I am happy with the content.
When you are confident that your ideas are sufficiently thought through for someone else to comprehend your meaning, copy and paste the text into an audience-friendly format, whether that is an email, memo, letter, report … or whatever you need.
Thirdly, find a way to test your draft before you send it.
Here are three suggestions for doing that:
If you are very pushed for time, changing the visual appearance of the ideas helps enormously. You might put the ideas into a one-page storyline format, or into an email, or – even – just change the font so it looks different.
If you have a little time, put the draft down and do something else for a while before coming back and looking at it again, or ask a colleague for their opinion
If you have a substantial amount of time, leave it overnight and review again in another format in the morning and repeat the process whenever you hit a new milestone.
If you would like some more ideas that will help you orient your communication more directly toward your audience, consider joining the Clarity First Program.
We help you communicate complex ideas so that demanding audiences stop and listen.
Keywords: #design your strategy, #develop your storyline,
Helping technical teams turn their communication ‘on its head’
Is the gap between the way your technical teams communicate so vastly different from what your leadership needs to hear that you often rewrite their papers yourself – or edit them so much you may as well have?
This is because you naturally understand that you must not sacrifice technical accuracy and incur the wrath of your team (who will accuse you of ‘dumbing down' their work), but that you also must provide a clear sense of perspective and clarity about the context of the work for those who need to make the decisions.
While it is valid to think that in sitting between these two worlds you are well placed to translate for them, there are some practical things you can do to help your technical team communicate to non-technical audiences.
Appreciate that “writing” is not the same thing as “communicating” to an audience
Writing is a tool both for the writer to complete their own problem solving and sense-making as well as a tool for conveying ideas to another person.
It is vital that a writer learns to discern when they are communicating to themselves and when they are communicating for another person.
Understand what their audience really needs from them
Have a clear picture of the people they are communicating to: their interest (or lack of) in the writer's pet topic, existing biases, and purpose for wanting to hear from the writer in this particular instance.
Flip their early drafts on their head
When pouring out the first draft or two, writers so often describe their own problem solving journey: “we did this, found this and then did this and … and … etc.”
However, once a writer is more familiar with not just the journey itself, but what this journey told us, they can flip early drafts upside down and communicate the conclusion up front to address our audience's key concern.
Writers are ready to flip their writing to focus on their audience only when they can explain their key points to another person while ‘standing on our head' – not that I suggest you try it: explaining the main points to someone who is not a technical expert in less than a minute will do.
If you would like some more ideas that will help your technical team turn their communication on its head, take a look at the Clarity First Program.
We teach individuals and groups how to communicate so that their good ideas get the traction they deserve.
Keywords: #design your strategy #develop your storyline