Would they pay to speak to you?

If you want to set yourself an ambitious standard to improve your communication, ask yourself before an important discussion or presentation: “Would they pay to hear what you have to say?”

You may not get an unqualified yes, but the exercise of trying to achieve it will force you to think carefully about the practical value your listeners receive, in the form of useful information that they can use to decide or act in a way to improve their personal or business outcomes.

Of course, in real life, no one actually pays to hear what you have to say, right?

Actually, they do.

They pay in the scarcest resource they have: their attention. Economist Herbert Simon wrote:

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

If Simon was correct when he wrote those words in 1971, imagine how much more important it is 50 years later to repay your recipients’ precious attention.

Attention is difficult and costly. So, do your best to make it worth your listeners’ time and effort. Attention is not just time; it’s time and effort. Focus on RoTE: Return on Time and Effort. Or, in lean communication terms: give them value, briefly and clearly.

See also: The Economics of Lean Communication