In this episode of the PolicyViz Podcast, I chat with communication expert Davina Stanley about the power of clear and structured messaging in business communication. Davina shares insights from her books Engage and Elevate, discussing how leaders and teams can improve their communication efficiency through message mapping. She explains how a well-structured message can reduce back-and-forth revisions, build trust, and lead to faster decision-making. Drawing from her diverse career—from teaching kindergarten in Australia to working at McKinsey—Davina emphasizes the importance of outlining, visual hierarchy, and strategic thinking in crafting compelling business messages. Whether it’s an email, a presentation, or a major proposal, she reveals how clarity in communication can transform workplace productivity and leadership effectiveness.
Resources
Check out Davina’ Clarity First Program.
Guest Bio
Davina Stanley serves Australia’s top organisations as well as a growing number of international, particularly US, clients. She draws on over 28 years’ experience when helping leaders and teams to clarify their thinking so they can communicate complex ideas. Her work helps experts deliver the right message to the right people in the right way regardless of the context or content.
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Transcript
00:02.62
Jon
Hi, Devin, i good to see you, good to meet you. Thanks for thanks for coming on the show.
00:06.15
Dav
Oh, thanks for having me. It’s great to meet you too.
00:07.66
Jon
um Excited ah to have you on the show. I have your book here, Engage. ah Love it. ah very ah Very enjoyable read, very visual read, which of course I enjoy.
00:15.43
Dav
Thank you.
00:20.66
Jon
um So I thought we would start ah with background. um you know where What’s your background? How did you get into this? like area of work and and and why did you start your firm clarity first?
00:35.66
Dav
Okay, several questions.
00:37.59
Jon
Yeah.
00:37.71
Dav
I think, so how did I get into this work? I’ve got a really unusual career. I began as a kindergarten teacher in Australia, which is not the usual beginning for a McKinsey communication specialist, right?
00:51.42
Dav
right i yeah Probably not, probably not, but it’s really useful, really useful.
00:54.24
Jon
Probably not, yeah, probably not, yeah. yeah ah Yeah, yeah
01:00.56
Dav
So I am ah grew up on a farm and I had no idea
01:03.16
Jon
yeah.
01:04.90
Dav
what I wanted to do. But I thought anything was possible. I just had no idea what that was. And so anyway, I did teaching because it was a guaranteed ticket off the farm and I liked children.
01:15.93
Dav
But and I learned to communicate by, a you know, taught by a wonderful, wonderful children’s author when I was at Teachers College. And so I majored in art while I was there, which will be relevant for when we continue.
01:28.59
Jon
yeah Yeah, for sure.
01:29.84
Dav
Yeah. But um anyway, Mem Fox, who writes his most beautiful Australian children books, taught me to communicate and taught me a whole lot of really great things about writing in particular.
01:42.27
Dav
So I took that away with me. And when I decided for certain that teaching probably teaching young children probably wasn’t for me, I went back to university and studied communication while I was working in a corporate communication role inside a large chemical company.
01:58.30
Jon
and culture.
02:00.75
Dav
And so, you know, I was doing doing and learning at the same time. And then my husband had this travel bug. And so we moved to Hong Kong. We married very young and we moved to Hong Kong in our mid 20s.
02:13.72
Dav
And so he saw a job ad when we were there and he he thought, oh, McKinsey, I’d love to work for them. And he had a look at this advertisement and he said, oh, oh, that might be for you.
02:24.89
Dav
And he showed me and I was like, oh, that looks fun. What’s McKinsey? What’s management consulting?
02:29.71
Jon
Ah, yeah.
02:30.65
Dav
Oh, okay. That sounds cool.
02:33.72
Jon
Yeah.
02:34.01
Dav
I think I’d like that more than what I’m doing right now. So okay. So I applied and I got the job. And so I learned the structured communication techniques and disciplines that um that I use now then.
02:48.53
Jon
Right.
02:48.59
Dav
And that’s formed the foundation of the sort of work that I do around How do you blend problem solving and communication so you can crystallize a really clear and compelling message? And so that gave me the foundation. And then why did I start what I’m doing now is is a different question in a way. Initially, it was practical.
03:13.59
Dav
You know, I was a mum with young children traveling. We moved through lots of different countries. And so I was freelancing. And so I was freelancing back to McKinsey to start with for a long time. I’ve freelanced for them for about 15 years. And, you know, I did a range of things, including firm working for firm learning where I was training and coaching people. So it sort of emerged out of all of that and, you know, a blend of doing things for people and helping people do things.
03:42.13
Dav
And I really like helping people do things. I just really enjoy it. So that’s the teaching impulse, I suppose.
03:48.39
Jon
Yeah.
03:49.44
Dav
But bring that together with working with now, you know, everyone from graduates through to the C-suite. I work typically now at the mid to senior levels with clients.
03:59.90
Dav
And Clarity First also began as a little bit of an experiment, I guess.
04:00.19
Jon
Right.
04:06.42
Dav
to start offering public programs. So when I first started the Clarity First Program website, it was back in about 2017 and you know people were moving in the corporate sort of world towards a little bit of online learning and there were cohort-based programs that you could run online. People were starting to sell online courses to people in corporates, not just you know, their life coaching or, you know, how to, I don’t know, take a better photograph or those sorts of things, which I think came first in this sort of online learning space, but rather corporate business skills.
04:41.02
Jon
Yeah.
04:45.60
Jon
Right.
04:46.09
Dav
So I wanted to explore that. And so gradually that’s become my whole business to work with corporate clients, but also, um, you know, with the public programs and then the the online courses and books as well.
05:01.20
Jon
Right.
05:01.27
Dav
So I enjoy innovating.
05:03.60
Jon
Yeah.
05:03.65
Dav
I enjoy solving client problems. I enjoy trying to get better and better at what I do. So it’s part of what keeps me doing something that could be argued as being the same thing for a long time.
05:14.38
Jon
Right. But but yeah, because you have that mix of clients, it feels and probably feels different all the all the time.
05:19.06
Dav
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
05:20.27
Jon
Yeah.
05:21.10
Dav
Yeah, most definitely.
05:21.22
Jon
Yeah. Do you have a do you have just a personal question? Do you have a count of the number of countries you’ve lived in?
05:30.22
Dav
Well, Australia, Hong Kong, New York, Tokyo, and the now Seattle, right?
05:37.04
Jon
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
05:37.88
Dav
Yeah, but many places in Australia as well.
05:40.21
Jon
Right. Sure.
05:41.34
Dav
But there are many different reasons.
05:41.55
Jon
um Yeah. um so So I’m curious if you see common threads of challenges either within industry or sectors or just kind of overall that show up when when when people call you for help.
05:53.84
Dav
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
06:05.30
Dav
Beautiful. I think a common problem overall is what I call the operating rhythm around preparing important communication. And I think what happens is people don’t realize, leaders don’t realize the importance of their role in setting their team up to draft messaging. They focus on documents,
06:32.90
Dav
They don’t focus on messaging. So what I encourage people to do is to think first about the outcome they need from their communication. So what is the communication strategy for this presentation, for this deck? And that might be really quick, right? Oh, we’ve we’ve got to get them to trust that everything’s okay. Everything’s on progress. Or we need them to agree to adjust the way we’re going forward a little.
07:01.63
Dav
We need them to decide. We need them to support us so we can actually deliver. you know What is the outcome you want?
07:10.59
Jon
Yeah.
07:10.70
Dav
And so sometimes that’s really quick. But sometimes that’s a lot of thinking work that the leader really needs to be involved in because if they don’t get involved in that early, what happens is the team goes away and does their very best to draft something that’ll be useful.
07:28.14
Dav
And they use a whole lot of cues around them. what’s been done before. Maybe there’s a corporate template that they need to use. Maybe they think somebody else is a great communicator.
07:39.20
Dav
They’ll try and do it like they do. Maybe they’ll just do what they’ve always done. You know, they’ll they’ll do something and they’ll send it up to their manager and their manager will open it up and go, right.
07:43.59
Jon
Mm hmm.
07:51.40
Dav
You know, Mary’s done a lot of really great work here. Mary and Fred and Bill, however many people, they’ve put a lot of effort into this and I really need to do it justice.
08:01.09
Jon
Right.
08:01.09
Dav
So I can see the effect, that’s great, but I need time to think. I need time to think to really get into this and decide whether it hits the mark or not, because I can’t see at first glance.
08:11.82
Jon
Yeah.
08:14.07
Dav
So, okay, I’m back to back in meetings now for the next week, and it’s not due just yet, so I’ll get to it.
08:18.48
Jon
Yeah.
08:22.94
Dav
And what happens is it waits, it lingers, and it lingers until it becomes urgent, maybe a day or two before it needs to be submitted or presented. And so the manager goes, right, I need to do that thing for Mary. And they open it up at nine o’clock at night or maybe on Sunday afternoon and they get into it and they’re going through it and they say, right, there’s loads of great stuff here, but they haven’t crystallized the message. They’re missing the strategic context. No, no, no, no, that’s not right. Yeah, that’s useful information, but we need to put it in its place. So they they get faced with a couple of choices.
08:59.45
Dav
Time has now run out, so it’s really hard to delegate it back, partly because they’re also working out of hours.
09:01.30
Jon
Mmhmm.
09:06.59
Dav
And this stuff typically happens out of hours, not always, but typically. And so, right, can I cant delegate it back? Maybe. If I do that, I’m going to put a few stickies on it, or I’m going to put some comments in track changes.
09:22.18
Dav
And nine times out of 10, they focus on the minutiae. They don’t focus on the real substance. They’re trying to fix these little things. right So that’s one option. Another option is just to ask some questions and get information back.
09:35.73
Jon
who Yeah.
09:35.80
Dav
And you know to and fro like that, another option is to redo it. And that’s where people end up. They end up redoing it. So what happens is leaders end up doing their team’s work for them, not because their team can’t, but because their team hasn’t been set up to know how.
09:45.65
Jon
Right.
09:52.43
Jon
Right.
09:52.76
Dav
And so that’s a common problem that I see everywhere, which is why I wrote Engage and I wrote the partner book that goes with that called Elevate, which is for the leader.
09:56.11
Jon
Mm hmm.
10:02.85
Dav
So I wrote two books in parallel, which I think is a sure sign of madness. right
10:09.80
Jon
but Right.
10:10.18
Dav
One for the individual contributor and one for the leader. And whether you’re a manager of a team or you’re a CEO, the principles in the Elevate book.
10:17.08
Jon
Mm
10:19.82
Dav
are the same, really. It’s how do you set everyone up for success so that instead of receiving that draft document to review, you can set them up well and head them off in the right direction and allow room for evolving inner evolution during that time as well.
10:21.22
Jon
hmm.
10:35.94
Jon
Right.
10:38.02
Dav
And then you get given a draft, which is this one page message map, and it’s really structured and it’s really easy to get to the message. so even if you open it up at the end of your day or maybe you know at nine o’clock at night you can see the message you know that you don’t have to put hours aside maybe 15 or 20 minutes you can review it and you can go back and say look i’ve made a few adjustments here and here and here here’s why or you can say look let’s have a call i think we need to rethink this or actually what i meant was can you have another go so
11:10.51
Jon
yeah
11:16.67
Dav
you’re setting yourself up to be able to contribute really constructively and be part of that dialogue around what is the messaging that we need here to drive progress in the business.
11:29.41
Jon
Yeah.
11:29.71
Dav
And it’s changes the nature of it because I think another thing happens with these one pages, people are really happy to roll up their sleeves and talk about it, you know, discuss.
11:41.26
Jon
Yeah.
11:42.46
Dav
Whereas when somebody sends you a document that they’ve sweated,
11:45.45
Jon
Mm
11:46.01
Dav
you’re treading on eggshells a little bit because you know that they’ve put a lot of effort into it and you’re put into a position where you’ve become a critic rather than a collaborator, right?
11:48.62
Jon
hmm.
11:56.22
Jon
Yeah, right.
11:59.65
Dav
And that’s that’s no fun for everybody. It’s like, oh, how do I do that delicately? How do I not stomp on all of the good stuff they’ve done?
12:04.83
Jon
right
12:09.54
Dav
How do I work with them, you know, during office hours as much as you can?
12:14.33
Jon
Right.
12:16.39
Dav
to get a really collaborative and constructive outcome.
12:21.01
Jon
Right. You um start at at least the the Engage book, which I which i have here, um kind of making an argument that I make a lot as well, which is it may sound like doing this message map upfront is going to cost you more, is going to cost you time because you’re not writing the document right away.
12:26.41
Dav
Yeah.
12:44.76
Dav
Yes.
12:44.88
Jon
But in the long run, you’re actually going to save a ton of time because you have done this outline.
12:47.99
Dav
Correct.
12:49.36
Jon
So can you talk a little bit about that that aspect of this? Because I can totally imagine the Elevate book, which which I don’t have next to it.
12:52.72
Dav
Yes.
12:58.05
Jon
But I could imagine that’s probably a big part of that, which is like, look, you’re going to you as the CEO, as the president, you’re going to save a lot of time, even though maybe it doesn’t feel like that right now.
13:05.45
Dav
Yeah.
13:08.01
Dav
Yeah, yeah. I think the hard thing for the leaders is to get their heads into the topic early. You know, it’s so much easier to react to something.
13:15.71
Jon
he Yeah.
13:15.87
Dav
So I think that’s what tends to happen. And people are moving at pace quite a lot. But I think what I encourage people to do is think about time a bit differently. And think so if you think about the feeling of time, which, you know, you you feel productive, you feel like you’re making progress when you You know, you you’ve got that request to prepare that update and it’s like, okay, right.
13:41.39
Dav
Um, Ross leaves up start typing. You feel like you’re doing something.
13:44.61
Jon
Yeah.
13:46.11
Dav
So it feels like I’m on it. I’m doing, um, so it’s that feeling that’s deceptive. I think if you start to think about time as the time you start preparing to the time you get a result as opposed to the time you start preparing.
13:53.83
Jon
Yeah.
14:06.06
Dav
and the time you hit send, you get a very different view of time.
14:06.57
Jon
Right.
14:11.90
Dav
So even with emails, that you know very rarely would you prepare a one page message map for an email, but the same principles of a really short introduction, one highly visible main message that’s maybe bold with white space around it so you can see it, it’s obvious, and a small number of supporting points, that principle applies to email as well.
14:19.01
Jon
right
14:33.66
Dav
and I had a wonderful example late last year when I spoke with a client and they used the technique to write an email and then he emailed me back later on.
14:46.87
Dav
And he said to me, oh my gosh, I sent this request to Deborah. I think her name was Deborah. And um normally she would say, you know, okay, can we have a chat about that?
15:02.11
Dav
And we have a couple of 30 minute conversations
15:02.16
Jon
Yeah.
15:05.39
Dav
And then she go, yeah, all right. This time we spent that bit of time, you know, thinking about the message for the email. I sent the email and she came back within 20 minutes and said, okay, thanks.
15:19.16
Dav
That was it. You know, he sort of went, huh, okay.
15:20.29
Jon
Right, right. Yeah, yeah.
15:24.26
Dav
No, I’ve never had that before.
15:26.59
Jon
is it is it um I wonder if it’s just a ah ah problem of people not outlining. I mean, this is the thing I always talk when when I talk about presentations, right?
15:39.08
Jon
Like start by outlining and sketching and you know, and you know essentially my version of of your message map, right? um and And the line that I always tell people is like, we’re taught to write an outline on our first book report back in like fourth grade, right?
15:51.88
Jon
Like we have to write an outline before the teacher lets us write the thing.
15:54.10
Dav
this
15:55.29
Jon
Do you think we as adults just forget that? Is it just like we’ve got to get to the next thing? We think we’re so organized, but we’re not like…
16:02.93
Dav
I think it’s more than that. I think it’s more than that. I think it’s how do you outline and it’s what?
16:06.33
Jon
Hmm.
16:09.07
Dav
you outline even more importantly it’s what do you outline because that strategy piece you know thinking about that outcome that you want very often when I work with people on let’s think about you know a significant communication let’s say
16:12.76
Jon
Mm hmm.
16:25.01
Dav
I might have a two hour coaching session with some people who’ve learnt the techniques through workshops that I’ve given them, let’s say. And so we have a two hour coaching session together and we really get into this strategy thing. And they’ve, of course, got to tell me about what the story is about. You know, what what do we need? Who are we communicating to? So we’ve got to go through that process.
16:45.60
Dav
which they need to do for themselves anyway.
16:48.14
Jon
Yeah.
16:48.26
Dav
um But I might need a little bit of extra context because I’m out of context. So allowing for that sometimes will take 90 minutes out of two hours to really nail who it is that matters on that decision making body, steering committee, leadership team, board.
17:05.61
Jon
Right.
17:07.90
Dav
Who is a couple of people that matter the most? Have we got inside their heads yet? Are they going to be for or against what we’re putting forward? Why? What are their issues? Really drilling into that so that once that is clear, then we can say, right, we can then step forward and say, OK, well, now we know broadly what we need to say. Whereas because people go to outlining and they actually don’t really know what they need to say.
17:39.70
Jon
Yeah.
17:40.16
Dav
that also have a habit I find of putting down topics of conversation rather than messages, right?
17:49.87
Jon
Oh, interesting. Yeah.
17:51.07
Dav
And they don’t understand how to connect the messages to each other so that together it’s a really cohesive, coherent story.
18:04.21
Jon
Yeah.
18:05.04
Dav
So decision makers want to be able to see the message really fast. So most business communication is, you know, when you’re getting a decision is about explaining yourself.
18:21.38
Dav
Now it’s got to be persuasive. It’s got to be the right tone. You’ve got to be careful not to be too strong or too weak. You know, you’ve got to factor in in emotion to that sort of extent, but ultimately,
18:33.60
Jon
Right.
18:35.15
Dav
people want to be able to make a good decision quickly.
18:37.79
Jon
Yeah.
18:38.82
Dav
Factoring in the context and the stakeholders and you know all of the corporate stuff that goes around it. But they want to be able to make a good decision quickly. What they don’t want is to spend quite some time trying to understand the pre-read, coming to the meeting with a whole lot of please explain questions, clarification questions.
19:01.85
Jon
Yeah.
19:01.95
Dav
Can you explain that to me? Can you explain that to me? And then at the end, sending people off with more questions, right?
19:08.64
Jon
Yeah. Right.
19:10.04
Dav
They want to be able to understand the pre-read if there is one. If not, they want a really quick presentation that’s crisp and clear without somebody reading through every slide.
19:24.46
Dav
It’s like, no, no, no, no, just tell me what this is about so we can have a proper conversation, to debate the issue, get the decision and move on. or I was at a conference um last week in Houston.
19:39.06
Dav
And one of the people there said to me, he had, I think he was originally given 20 minutes to put forward, like it was like $170 million dollars request, right?
19:50.47
Dav
So big, big request.
19:51.51
Jon
Yeah, yeah.
19:52.71
Dav
And so he had 20 minutes to pitch it. And he got in and they said, really sorry, you’ve got two minutes. And he went, hmm, okay. And he could do it because he was messaging was so clear.
20:03.68
Jon
Right.
20:05.42
Dav
So he pitched it in, he said, 90 seconds and said, okay, do we agree then? And the the chairman of the board said, hang on, that’s my job.
20:10.46
Jon
Yeah.
20:14.77
Dav
But he got his decision.
20:16.65
Jon
Yeah.
20:17.33
Dav
So, and I think one of the stories I share in the book is with an old colleague and client of mine, Mike, where he said to one of his team, look, just put it on a page.
20:29.01
Dav
you know You’ve got the deck, but you know you’ve got the the the all the messaging on at the beginning. And they went into the meeting together with, I forget if it was a client or a boss, and the boss said, oh, good, I can see what you mean there. That’s great. Love it. Off you go then. Please do what you said you want to do. And the Amy was her name, the person working with my my colleague was like, what?
20:53.29
Dav
Don’t you want to see? Don’t you want to see everything? All these things, don’t you want to see that?
20:57.48
Jon
All the details. Yeah.
20:59.01
Dav
And he’s like, no. If you can make it as clear and compelling as that, it’s obvious to me you’ve done your thinking.
21:04.83
Jon
Right.
21:05.84
Dav
It’s obvious you’ve done your thinking.
21:06.02
Jon
Right.
21:08.05
Dav
And I know you. I trust you. You’re thorough. I can’t see any holes in that. Go do it.
21:13.80
Jon
Yeah, it’s interesting.
21:13.86
Dav
Next thing. You know.
21:16.11
Jon
i i you You said the word trust and I have that ah noted on my on my notes here and I and i wonder um how often you run into issues of trust between the manager and and their staff and is it you know how much of it is trust and how much of it is kind of the kind of I think the the practical core of the book which is you know how do you outline your your message and and all this that we’ve been talking about but
21:30.59
Dav
Mm-hmm. who
21:42.71
Dav
Yes.
21:48.08
Jon
do do I guess my question would be, do you run into cases when you’re working with clients where there’s just a total lack of trust between groups and and and building that trust is a big part of the challenge you need to help them overcome?
22:03.08
Dav
Yes, yeah, I think it’s it’s actually quite common. I don’t think it surfaced very often.
22:06.52
Jon
Yeah.
22:09.08
Dav
I don’t think it’s delivered as the key issue, but I did have one client again at the very end of last year, which is very convenient for the conversation we’re having, who I was emailing with the leader while I worked with some of his team in a highly, highly technical area of technology products, very senior product managers in technology.
22:09.12
Jon
Right.
22:12.29
Jon
Mm hmm.
22:19.04
Jon
Yeah.
22:32.25
Jon
Yeah.
22:32.38
Dav
And the manager came back and said, you know, my problem with the original draft that he gave you was that i it doesn’t look to me like they know what they’re doing, right?
22:48.49
Dav
So if you present material that is all over the place and it’s just data, data, data, data, it’s not tied together to pull together a cohesive structured message.
22:48.86
Jon
right
23:01.53
Jon
Right.
23:02.05
Dav
your decision maker has to work far too hard to work out what’s being said they want to know why that is nobody wants to work intellectually very hard everyone wants it to be easy right so and there’s biology to that but you know we we have to make it easy for our decision makers to understand what we’re saying otherwise they have to do too much work they’re frustrated with you for not doing that work that thinking work
23:07.98
Jon
Yeah.
23:13.56
Jon
Yeah. Yeah, sure.
23:27.31
Jon
Mm hmm.
23:30.90
Dav
And it does erode trust because they think if you know your your stuff, you should be able to say it.
23:37.66
Jon
Right, right.
23:38.35
Dav
And so if you can’t say it, maybe you don’t know it.
23:42.25
Jon
Yeah.
23:43.11
Dav
And so, yeah, I think trust becomes, you know, a very big issue, but I don’t think it’s one that people will confess very often.
23:47.49
Jon
That’s a big part of it.
23:52.75
Jon
Right. And it’s, and it’s, I guess it’s, it’s a subtle difference, the way you framed it at least was it’s not that I don’t trust you as a person, as an individual, um, because I hired you and you’re still working here and you do good work.
24:05.65
Dav
yeah you know
24:07.58
Jon
It said, I don’t, it’s kind of like, I don’t trust your ability to effectively communicate to me, which is.
24:13.81
Dav
Although it does bring competence questions also, right?
24:16.88
Jon
Sure. Sure. Right.
24:18.52
Dav
So it it does create competence questions.
24:20.96
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
24:21.85
Dav
And, you know, we we hire people and we we hope that they’re going to be able to do what we want them to do, but they can’t always.
24:29.30
Jon
Right.
24:30.82
Dav
So it does raise questions, I think.
24:31.39
Jon
Yeah.
24:34.06
Dav
I think it eradicates confidence.
24:34.31
Jon
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
24:37.14
Dav
Yeah.
24:38.05
Jon
um the um When you talk about the message map in the book, there are lots of really good images of examples and ways to sort of structure it. And I’ll let people buy the book so that they can get the get the template for themselves.
24:53.02
Jon
But I’m curious, but because you’ve already sort of talked about a few different ways in which the message maps are kind of ah used in an email versus a document. And I’m curious how much the the look or the visual of the map actually matters for people.
25:06.01
Dav
Yes, yes, yes. So I don’t think people tend to visualize, send the one pager very much as an email, although they might sometimes, they might.
25:17.22
Jon
Right.
25:17.97
Dav
I think in some contexts where clients are using it all at once and learning it together, it becomes symbolic. Hey, I’m doing the thing like we’ve agreed we’re going to do.
25:28.19
Jon
Yeah.
25:29.47
Dav
So it can be symbolic in that regard when you’re sending by email. I think In email, you take the principles that underpin it and probably use it in that way.
25:37.16
Jon
Yeah.
25:39.71
Dav
um So I think visualizing a message is really key. So one of the reasons I think the way we do the one pager is so helpful is because it makes it very easy to navigate the hierarchy of the messaging.
25:57.38
Dav
So we have a panel just short small panel on the left which allows for a short introduction which again is a bit of a trap people often want to dump a whole lot of information at the beginning that they think people need to know before they can understand and then they lose everybody who then doesn’t want to understand you know so we make that physically small so we use constraints
26:07.42
Jon
Yeah, yeah. Right.
26:18.44
Dav
by the nature of the shape to push people to stick with the shape. So it’s a short introduction in a small sort of panel on the left. But then we have a big box at the top with the main message in bigger font.
26:31.44
Dav
So you can see, well, that’s the main thing. If all you do is read that, that’s the thing.
26:33.88
Jon
Yeah.
26:36.40
Dav
That’s the engine of the whole story. And then below that, we have some boxes which have got the next level down in the hierarchy, and they look smaller than the main message, but bigger than the ones below, and then you go down another level.
26:51.28
Dav
So visually, it makes it very easy to see where things belong. It makes it very neat. It’s a bit like, I don’t know, have you heard of that woman Marie Kondo?
27:00.45
Jon
Yeah.
27:00.80
Dav
Yeah.
27:01.04
Jon
Yeah.
27:01.75
Dav
Marie Kondo for your thinking.
27:03.37
Jon
Yeah.
27:03.78
Dav
Everything’s in a place. And so even if you don’t understand the principles you know at a great depth that underpin it, it’s pretty easy to go, oh, that doesn’t belong there.
27:12.37
Jon
Right.
27:14.29
Dav
Why is that there? Oh, that’s ah don’t you know they’re not the same.
27:18.48
Jon
Right.
27:19.68
Dav
This isn’t persuading me. I think we need more i’m on that topic. you know It’s very easy to sort of comment and contribute on the messaging.
27:30.98
Dav
And it forces you to get up out of the weeds unless you do what one of my engineering clients said was, oh, that one page a thing. Yeah. then we We liked it, but we solved it for you because it really didn’t work for us.
27:41.55
Jon
yeah
27:45.71
Jon
Hmm.
27:45.72
Dav
So you said 10.5 minimum. and Four. Four is much better.
27:50.09
Jon
Four.
27:50.75
Dav
And we need like a two.
27:56.28
Jon
So you’ve just made a document that’s way harder to read. Right.
27:59.44
Dav
Correct, correct.
27:59.72
Jon
Okay. Great. Okay. Great. Yeah.
28:01.25
Dav
Because we couldn’t get it. We couldn’t.
28:02.64
Jon
Right. We couldn’t fit it. So yeah.
28:03.66
Dav
we couldn’t yeah but So think about a hierarchy with like a tree.
28:04.94
Jon
Yeah.
28:09.70
Dav
You know, that’s what I’m encouraging people to do. So you’ve got your main message at the top of the tree, you’ve got then a small number, two to five ideas below, and then you keep unpacking as you go and you go down as far as you need.
28:21.46
Dav
I mean, if you’re writing a book, the tree’s very deep, but it’s still limited at the top to one and then no more than five.
28:24.07
Jon
Right.
28:29.34
Dav
right?
28:30.06
Jon
Right.
28:30.36
Dav
Go as deep as you like. So um yeah, I think the visual aspect of that is is really important. And when you then translate that into a PowerPoint presentation, sometimes the one page is enough, you get your decision, you don’t need a deck.
28:46.81
Jon
Yeah, right.
28:47.36
Dav
Great. um that might disappoint people who love making decks, but you know, a lot of people just want to get the decision.
28:52.15
Jon
Yeah.
28:53.62
Dav
So one pager might be enough, may not.
28:56.03
Jon
Right.
28:56.72
Dav
If not, okay, so then you’ve got to make a deck. So you structure the deck around that messaging, right?
29:01.01
Jon
Mm hmm.
29:03.73
Dav
So it becomes a one-for-one match.
29:06.63
Jon
Yeah.
29:06.70
Dav
You have a title page, you have a short introduction for maybe a page, then you have your executive summary with your main message and your top line points. and then you unpack it section by section.
29:17.33
Jon
Mm
29:18.08
Dav
And it’s driven by the messaging, right?
29:20.83
Jon
hmm.
29:21.91
Dav
If you have to use a template and you’ve got sections that are mandated, you’ve got like a mini story for each section.
29:27.91
Jon
Yeah.
29:28.90
Dav
So that’s fine, that’s cool.
29:30.06
Jon
Right.
29:30.83
Dav
But again, within each section, your main message is the main thing and we’re breaking it up a lot.
29:35.21
Jon
Yeah.
29:36.57
Dav
So the hierarchy of the ideas becomes important. And then within that, you might also say, actually, I need to visualize that as a framework.
29:44.59
Jon
Yeah.
29:44.69
Dav
you know about five steps so I don’t want just one two three four five you know and words maybe I want to make it go by time and it’d be a flow or maybe it’s some other interconnection of things that you want to visualize so you do that but you’re doing it within the confines of the message and the structure of the messaging so
29:46.43
Jon
Right, right, right.
29:52.10
Jon
Yeah.
30:05.13
Jon
Right.
30:07.97
Dav
then so the visualisation is important to that level. But also then in a prose or a word document too, you know, if you look in the book, you’ll see that if you skim it, if you just flip it, the more important ideas you can just, you know, just thumb it and you will get the general idea of the whole story very quickly.
30:11.48
Jon
Yeah.
30:25.50
Jon
Right. Right.
30:29.37
Dav
because they’re bigger font, in my case, they’re blue, they’re colored. There are so many more layers. So it’s a book, they have to be more layers. So there needs to be more differentiation for the layers for the formatting.
30:39.02
Jon
Mm hmm.
30:41.15
Dav
But you can skim it to see the story because it’s all directly linked to the messaging.
30:45.58
Jon
Yeah. So I do want to get to to word before we finish, but um to Microsoft Word. Is your experience working with folks to do the, to do this exercise? What is the, ah what is the biggest or most common challenge you see with folks? Is that they’re kind of unable to drill down? Is it that they’re, I mean, yeah, I guess like what is the the thing that holds them back from being successful in this exercise?
31:21.82
Dav
I think it depends a bit according to the way their brains work.
31:26.46
Jon
Mm hmm.
31:27.42
Dav
And that can be clustered by industry and or type of role more than industry, I think, to generalize, to be really general. And it doesn’t always work that way.
31:37.26
Jon
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
31:39.80
Dav
but some people So people who are really good at technical details, engineers, technology people, people who’ve got some sort of very technical discipline,
31:50.67
Dav
um sometimes struggle to come up to tell the story, to say why those details matter. So I teach them to come out of the detail, but also to place those details in a commercial context.
32:07.86
Dav
right So it’s like, why does that solution matter? What value is it going to bring? How’s the decision going to be made? So there’s a bit of that in that very technical space.
32:19.27
Jon
Yeah.
32:21.88
Dav
where you’ve got people who get that intuitively. Yeah, got it, got it, got it. And they’re very quick at coming up with the message.
32:26.76
Jon
Right.
32:29.75
Dav
Sometimes I have to teach them to come into the detail and to be able to say, okay, why is that the right thing?
32:34.08
Jon
Okay.
32:36.91
Dav
Can you justify it?
32:37.18
Jon
Yeah.
32:38.72
Dav
They jump from A to Z because they can just see it intuitively.
32:41.31
Jon
Right. Yeah.
32:41.99
Dav
And they they struggle to sort of build the case, if you like, in it a different kind of a way. So it depends on the way their brains work. So my job is partly to intuit in the heartbeat, what kind of help somebody needs and within a group, you know, how to explain things according to what, you know, the balance of the group needs, because there’ll be a mix within the group.
32:56.48
Jon
Right.
33:05.25
Jon
Right.
33:05.95
Dav
So I think it’s it’s that, but I think if you sort of say what is the most significant problem, it’s really getting the strategy right for the communication to work out what it is that you need to say.
33:17.85
Jon
who
33:18.43
Dav
That isn’t as obvious as it seems because people tend to focus on, I need to update, which means that you then tell them what you’re doing other than what you need.
33:22.89
Jon
Yeah.
33:29.71
Jon
Yeah. Right.
33:32.23
Dav
Right. So they tend to look back too much rather than looking forward.
33:32.93
Jon
Yeah.
33:36.56
Jon
Oh, interesting.
33:37.52
Dav
Right.
33:37.56
Jon
Yeah.
33:38.50
Dav
And, you know, that, that becomes, Oh, right.
33:38.76
Jon
Yeah.
33:42.80
Dav
Yeah. Okay. That’s a light bulb.
33:44.52
Jon
Yeah.
33:44.56
Dav
It’s a light bulb for people.
33:45.90
Jon
Well, I can also see it for the for the more tactical folks who tend to be more in the weeds and like that’s their comfortable place.
33:51.83
Dav
they genius yeah
33:53.10
Jon
Yeah, right, exactly, yeah. um Okay, so ah so one last question for you. Well, actually too, but um ah because you spend a good chunk of the beginning of the book, and we’ve talked about this a bit already, but like when are Microsoft track changes good?
33:58.12
Dav
him Oh, You know, with the advent of AI, well, when are they good?
34:15.50
Jon
yeah
34:17.92
Dav
I think we can insert AI in the process to reduce the need for them a little bit by saying, you know, putting into co pilot or something and saying, please get this to a grade seven or grade eight, no more reading level.
34:22.03
Jon
Yeah.
34:31.08
Jon
m Yeah.
34:31.62
Dav
Yeah, using active language.
34:32.62
Jon
Yeah.
34:34.22
Dav
so we can do that, so we can get rid of the need for track changes to fix those those kinds of things.
34:40.28
Jon
Right.
34:40.33
Dav
We don’t need that anymore, which is good news because it means that track changes can be used for the smart stuff. So my argument would be that track changes should be used very little because the solution it should be solved before you get to the document.
34:56.54
Dav
and The combination of the message map and AI to fine tune your expression,
34:56.84
Jon
Right. Right.
35:02.98
Dav
um track changes I think and this is the first time I’ve been asked this question okay but very rarely now right because they keep you in the weeds right it’s like in a contract in a legal contract or something you know documenting that kind of thing sure yeah yeah yeah
35:14.43
Jon
OK. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. Yeah. Yeah.
35:25.32
Jon
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is interesting how the AI piece does kind of change a lot of this calculus, right? Because yeah, you can have this really technical document. And then if you want to have it for another person or another audience or whatever, yeah, you can just feed it in and say, you know,
35:50.28
Jon
Like you said, make this a seventh grade reading level and then go back in and and sort of finish and polish it up. Yeah, it does does change things.
35:57.07
Dav
Yeah, I don’t just sort of jump into what you said there, though.
35:58.26
Jon
Well, yeah.
36:00.71
Dav
I think that the seven or eight reading levels essential for CEOs and board directors, too.
36:05.26
Jon
Yeah.
36:05.64
Dav
Right. So I think that’s, I think, pretty healthy level for everybody.
36:06.34
Jon
yeah
36:09.79
Dav
If you’re changing who you’re sending it to, I might help you think about what to say, but it doesn’t help you know what to say.
36:18.28
Jon
That’s right, right, right, absolutely.
36:18.99
Dav
Right. Because that’s that’s that’s the bit that the humans actually have to do.
36:22.49
Jon
Yeah, the humans have to do so, yeah.
36:23.49
Dav
Hmm.
36:24.82
Jon
Until the terminators take over, then it’s a whole different story.
36:27.87
Dav
Yeah, exactly.
36:28.82
Jon
Anyway, Devana, thank you so much.
36:29.11
Dav
Yeah.
36:31.68
Jon
The book is engaged and it’s cousin book elevate. Folks listening to the show have their own challenges communicating. How can they find you?
36:43.53
Jon
How can they get in touch to get help with their teams?
36:46.51
Dav
Beautiful. So my website is clarityfirstprogram.com. And if they like what they hear and they want to dip their toe in the water just a little bit, if they go to clarityfirstprogram.com slash emails, I’ve got a emails in better emails in 10 minutes course.
37:04.92
Jon
Okay.
37:05.44
Dav
So they might find that useful.
37:07.62
Jon
Yeah.
37:08.44
Dav
And obviously the book goes a lot further than that, but that would get them started very quickly.
37:11.05
Jon
Yeah. Awesome. Terrific. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun.
37:17.75
Dav
My pleasure John, great to speak with you.
