Chapter 5 Communicate concisely
How many meetings do you go to where you wonder why you are there? How many briefings or updates do you attend that could have been covered with a short email or phone call instead? How many emails do you receive that take six read-throughs to understand? How many presentations do you sit bored through because the speaker didn't address your needs?
Too many to count, right? I am sure you have experienced most of these situations before. They feel like a complete waste of time because, well, they are.
I see this time wasting happen a lot in organisations when the person conducting the meeting, sending the email or delivering the presentation has not put in the right effort to ensure the content is valuable for the people receiving the information.
This lack of effort is not only a waste of time; in business it's also a waste of money.
If a leader brings together 1000 people for a one-hour update, but doesn't prepare sufficiently enough or think about what they are communicating and why, what is the total business cost of that wasted time? For simplicity, let's just say each person attending the meeting earns $50 an hour. That means the organisation has wasted $50 000 for an update that no-one gets or understands.
When people give their time to come and hear you speak, you must make sure it is worth their while, as well as yours. Otherwise, what is the point?
One of the major reasons we don't communicate concisely is that we put ourselves first, ...