Writing and Speaking Clearly and Concisely - Upgrading Your Communication
Communicating takes practice and skill. Learn the ingredients to high-quality communication.
Welcome to the Scarlet Ink newsletter. I'm Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. Each week I write a newsletter article on tech industry careers, and specific leadership advice. I also don’t believe that anyone reads this, but I feel like I should keep including it anyway — just in case. Hello to you, the single person who reads this intro text.
Free members can read some amount of each article, while paid members can read the full article. For some, part of the article is plenty! But if you'd like to read more, I'd love you to consider becoming a paid member! When I originally wrote this article in early 2022, I had no idea it would end up being so popular. However, my writing style has changed (I’d like to believe improved) in the 3+ years since I posted this. Considering I love the topic, I decided to re-write the article. It ended up twice as long, which speaks volumes towards my focus on being concise.
It would be quite meta of me to make this an extremely short article, but I think the topic is too important to be flippant.
Being clear and concise can be boiled down to these two major points.
Understand what you're trying to communicate — Think about your goal. What are you trying to achieve with this communication?
Everything communicated has purposeful intention — This means removing everything not associated with your goal.
To be clear (haha), this doesn’t mean being a jerk about it.
"How did you deal with that underperformer?"
"They got better."
That's not being clear and concise, that's being flippant.
Communication isn’t a bad thing. It’s not something to be avoided, because communication is critical when working on a team. The issue is when you do it poorly. Let’s get into those two major points I pointed out above.
What are you trying to communicate?
You need to work backwards from your goal.
A shockingly common issue is when people view the communication as the goal itself.
“What are you working on?”
“I’m writing a document on the X project.”
“What is the purpose of the document?”
“It’s a summary of the X project, with the current status.”
“And what are you trying to accomplish with it?”
??? Confusion and hesitation. “Well, we needed a document to summarize the X project.”
You might have stakeholders who want to stay in the loop on a project. This might be because they care about the results, or they’re active participants and might need to keep an eye on all the moving parts.
Alternatively, you might have senior leaders deciding if they should fund your project.
Or perhaps you’re trying to make a critical decision between two key points, and you need a decision maker to make a call.
Or perhaps you’re in an interview. What message do you want to send to that interviewer?
The number one solution to goal ambiguity is to 1) Articulate exactly what you’re trying to accomplish, and 2) Avoid compound communications.
“I need to decide between launching in Europe first, or Asia. And I need to update stakeholders on our current progress. And I need to ask our SVP for additional funding.”
That’s not one document. That’s at least three documents.
When you create the mega “Document on Project X”, every aspect of the document becomes watered down. The critical information on the launch decision is buried under the funding justification. And the current progress report muddies the waters when you’re trying to get that additional funding.
Follow these steps.
Clearly articulate (write down) every individual thing you want to accomplish with this communication.
If you can’t, you’re already in trouble. In my above example, you’d list the launch location, stakeholder update, and funding request.
Begin with the end in mind. What is the success criteria on each of those things you want to communicate?
Every time you communicate, you should know what result you want. For that launch location, you should know where you want to launch. For the stakeholder update, perhaps success is “Sounds great, keep going!” from everyone. For the funding, I assume your optional response is “Yes, here’s money.”
Understanding your goal includes understanding your preferred result. It’s a rare situation where you should communicate something without an expected and preferred response.
Now that you know exactly what you want to accomplish, you need to communicate only those things which further your goals. Which, as a side note, perfectly illustrates why you need to have these as separate communications.
Everything communicated has purposeful intention.
Status document writers have a bad habit of data diarrhea.
The lazy communicator starts with, “I don’t know what they’ll want to know, so I’ll just share a lot, in hopes of nailing everything.”
The quality writer says one of two things:
“I know what this audience needs to know.”
“I will research what this audience needs to know.”
This is much harder than data diarrhea. Because it means working backwards from your goal, through the information your stakeholders require, and putting that in a readable format.
I think working backwards is the best mental model for most communications.
It can be as simple as a short email, or as long as a complex document.
You start with your goal, and then ask yourself how to support your goal, until you’ve accomplished your mission.
“I need to decide between launching in Asia or Europe first. And I prefer Asia.”
Communication:
“We need to decide between launching in Asia or Europe first. We prefer to launch in Asia.”
“Our criteria is W, X, and Y.”
“Here is the data for both regions.”
That style of communication is effortless to read. It walks the reader through the goal of the communication, and spoon-feeds them the information they should need.
I don’t know how many times I’ve been at a decision meeting where we never got to the decision because we were tangled up with a 6-page document with an 11-page appendix. Focusing on your goals, and only on your goals, is what makes effective communicators effective.