Practical Eloquence Blog |

Lean Communication: Standard Work

By Jack Malcolm / 1.26.2016 / No Comment

In lean manufacturing, standard work means documenting the best practices of how the work gets done to establish a baseline for further improvement. The benefits are reductions in variability and making it easier for new people to learn the process. The same idea can apply to communication, particularly for complex topics and long presentations.

It can sometimes feel intimidating to try to figure out the best logical structure for a large mass of data that you’ve accumulated, and it is hard work if you try to reinvent the wheel each time. But fortunately, just as fiction writers know that there are only a few standard plots, lean communicators know that lean conversations and presentations tend to follow one of just a few established patterns.

Standard work pays off for both you and your audience in two ways. First, it’s efficient. It saves you time because having a small library of mental templates can make it easier to organize your thoughts without having to reinvent the wheel each time you think and communicate. It makes things easier on you mentally as well, because it reduces the number of decisions you have to make during preparation. As lean expert Dan Markovitz writes, “Jon Stewart said that it took him six years to write his first 45 minutes of material. Now, with a rigidly defined process (and, to be fair, a team of writers), he creates 30 minutes every single day. The structure, and the standard work you define, enable you to manage the unpredictable crises.” Standard work also saves time for your listeners because they don’t have to waste time trying to figure out your logic—they already know what to expect.

Standard work is also effective, in that it improves the quality of your thought. Just like a checklist, it frees your mind for more complex thoughts, and it allows you to refine and hone your approach over time as you learn what works and what does not.

(In case you think standard work will cramp your creative style, a guy named Shakespeare did OK following the same 5-act structure in all his plays.)

Here are six suggested standard structures that you may use. When you use these regularly with the same people, they will learn to expect things presented in a certain way, which can remove a tremendous amount of waste from the process.

Topical is the simplest, but can also be the most powerful. In effect, the structure is a pyramid. The main point, might be: “We need to do X.”

Reason #1 plus supporting detail
Reason #2 plus supporting detail
Reason #3 plus supporting detail

Problem/solution structure. Many proposals are the solution to a problem.

What is the problem?
- Description
- Root cause
- Consequence
Criteria for solution
Alternatives considered
Recommended solution
Implementation plan

Opportunity/investment: If there is no immediate pressing problem to be solved, but an opportunity to be seized, you can lay it out in the way the mind considers an investment proposal:

What is the opportunity?

How much is the investment?

What are the risks?

What’s the return? This does not have to be expressed in dollar terms, but the more you can quantify it, the stronger will be your argument.

SCR: This stands for Situation, Conflict, and Resolution. Also known as the story structure, it’s very powerful because our minds respond to stories. The SCR structure is not technically “lean”, because it saves the punchline for the end, but it does have great flow, so if the story is well-told, it can save time and reduce waste by engaging attention very well.

Situation describes the present context of future goals,
Conflict describes the issue that needs to be addressed and its consequences, and
Resolution is the “happy ending”.

YTT stands for Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. is useful for situation updates or regularly scheduled reviews. Here’s where we started from, here’s where we are today, and here’s where we need to go tomorrow. It has good flow, and is useful for brining everyone in the room up to a common level of knowledge…

Yesterday: Describe the origins of the situation
Today: What is the current state, and why it’s not satisfactory
Tomorrow: What needs to happen and what the benefits will be

Your Boss’s Favorite Structure: No, this is not a joke. Many executives have developed their own preferred structures for receiving information with which to make decisions. You should pay close attention to the questions they ask when you or others present, and figure out the pattern. By using this pattern, you will win and they will win.

Some things are worth repeating

Expression - Lean Communication

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

By Jack Malcolm / 1.21.2016 / No Comment

In its purest form, lean communication is about making every word count, so in that sense repetition is just a form of waste. In fact, unnecessary repetition can even subtract value. For example, the old third T: “Tell them what you told them” can sound condescending to an intelligent audience. Or if they already got your point, they’re going to get restless and tune out if you belabor it by adding yet another example.

So in its purest form, the lean communication hero would be like the guy who, when his wife complained that he never said “I love you”, replied: “I told you I loved you when I married you. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.”

If you’ve already said something once, isn’t it a form of waste to repeat it? It may seem that way, but that’s like thinking that only the last blow of the sledgehammer cracks the concrete. If you remember that the most important requirement of lean communication is to add value, you can see why repetition can sometimes be essential. Value doesn’t happen just because it’s uttered; it has to be heard, understood, agreed and remembered. Any one of those things may not happen the first time you say something: they may have not paid complete attention, they may not have fully bought into your logic, they may be thinking of the consequences of what you said, and so on. So, if you said it and it did not have its full effect, what you said only once is waste unless you repeat it as often as it takes.

When done right, repetition is the ally of persuasion because of the mere exposure effect, which says that we tend to develop a preference for things just because they’re more familiar. Familiarity seems less risky, which is important because new ideas represent change, which can be scary at first but seem less scary as we grow accustomed to it.

Churchill said it best:

“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.”

Going beyond day-to-day business communication, repetition is one of the most fundamental instruments of inspirational and memorable oratory. In 1940, Churchill could have said, “We shall fight everywhere we need to.” Instead, he said:

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills.

Martin Luther King could have said: “I have a dream, and in it I see the following (bullet points)”

Instead he said “I have a dream…” eight times. Was that wasteful? He said “Let freedom ring” eight times. Was that wasteful? He said “Free at last!” three times. Was that wasteful?

So repetition has its place even in lean communication, and it’s probably more important than ever because your listeners are so easily distracted. But if you decide to use it, you need to be smart about it so you don’t irritate your audience. Keep the following two rules in mind: First, pay close attention to the reactions of your audience and offer to go over parts that seem to be missing the mark. Second, when you do repeat your point, try to say it in a slightly different way.

Did you get all that? If not, go back and read it again.

A lot can happen between those lines

Success

What’s Just One Second Worth to You?

By Jack Malcolm / 1.19.2016 / No Comment

What’s One Second Worth to You?

Kipling said that if you could fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run, you could rule the world. That’s a bold claim, but I’m going to go even further. Just one second can make a huge difference in your life.

This may turn out to be the most efficient how-to article you’ve ever read, because I’m not going to ask you to take long stretches of your time to work on a skill; I’m simply going to ask you to take one second at a time, one second that can mean all the difference between success or failure, or the difference between winning or losing a sale, maybe even the difference between getting your ass kicked or making someone’s day.

We have 86,400 of them every day, so why worry about just a single one? That’s because some seconds in your day are hugely more important than others. It’s amazing how much can happen in just one second:

One second is enough time to respond instead of reacting, to suppress your amygdala and engage your frontal cortex. When someone cuts me off in traffic, my immediate default reaction is to express my displeasure, but I have to admit that I take a quick glance to see how big the other guy is before deploying my single digit salute!

One second is enough time to grasp the bottom line of your message and choose to lead with it. As I’ve written before, BLUF is a key to lean communication, especially since one second is enough time to lose someone’s attention.

One second is enough time to organize your answer before it begins spilling out of your mouth, so that you make it easier for the listener to grasp your meaning.

One second is enough time to boost your perceived IQ. My friend Andy Blackstone used to say you could boost your perceived IQ by ten points just by taking a second before answering a question. I don’t know if that’s literally true, but it makes a lot of sense.

One second is enough time to undo all the good you’ve accomplished to that point, because bad is stronger than good. Do you think George H.W. Bush would like to take back the one second of his life when he checked his watch during a Presidential debate, and sent a signal to the whole country that he did not want to be there?

One second is enough time to kick in your training. For example, when someone says “That’s complicated”, you may immediately react by saying “no it’s not”. Instead, if you take just one second to recall your training on objection management, you will remember to cushion your response: “I can see how it might seem that way at first…”

One second is enough time to shift your perspective from inside-out to outside-in, from I don’t see it that way, to let me understand why they see it that way.

One second is enough time to reframe the situation. Sometimes someone says something that rubs you the wrong way, and you immediately react negatively. Our brains are hard-wired to spot threats before opportunities, because that’s usually what keeps us alive. But every situation contains some good and some bad, and one second is often enough time to focus on the good.

One second is enough time to take control of a situation by getting inside a competitor’s OODA loop. In that brief instant, you can observe, orient, decide and act.

One second is enough time to add impact to what you just said by pausing after an important point.

One second is enough time to choose your perception. Perception is the gateway to attitude, and the attitude you choose to a situation can make all the difference in the world.

If I could sum up the value of one second, it’s that it’s the crucial instant during which choices are made, and that’s what makes the difference between making things happen and letting things happen.

Sales

The Dangers of Shallow Business and Financial Acumen

By Jack Malcolm / 1.13.2016 / No Comment

Years ago, my wife and I planned a trip to Germany. I’m kind of a language dilettante, so I committed to learning as much German as I could so that I could get the most benefit from the experience. I studied a couple of beginning German books, and listened to cassette tapes (remember those?) during my daily commute. And it worked: I developed a decent repertoire of words and phrases and even had reasonably acceptable pronunciation, so I felt very confident when I got over there.

I almost immediately found out that the level of knowledge I had achieved was actually dangerous: it was good enough to get me into trouble but not good enough to get me out of it. When I would ask someone for directions, they would infer from my question that I spoke better German than I did, and would rattle off a list of directions. I could usually get the first sentence and maybe the second, but then I was totally lost after that—literally and figuratively. So, I would say thank you politely, head in the general direction they told me, and then try to figure it out from there. I soon stopped even trying to talk to people, because I was embarrassed to be found out. My wife, to this day, loves to make fun of the countless hours I wasted!

My shallow knowledge of German didn’t carry critical consequences besides embarrassment and a little confusion, but the consequences of shallow financial and business acumen for sales professionals can be very costly, to you, your company, and your customer.

It’s a commonplace in complex sales to say that salespeople should sell consultatively. Whether you call it challenger selling, insight selling, solution selling, or any other name you choose, it is the most effective way to succeed in the high stakes world of complex B2B sales.

But you can’t really be a consultant without a deep and nuanced understanding of your customer’s business. And if you try to challenge your customers, what happens when they challenge you back?[1] Some companies try to institutionalize this knowledge by creating “playbooks”, scripts and financial calculators that their salespeople can use to support their consultative approach. But what happens when the CFO or some other high-level executive, impressed with their approach so far, scratches beneath the surface and asks them a question they can’t answer?

At best, they may suffer a little embarrassment and loss of time as they admit they don’t know and offer to find out the answer. Of course, many salespeople don’t like to admit they don’t know, so they may try to bluff an answer, which generally ends badly, for the salesperson and for the client. Either way, they run the risk of foreclosing any future opportunity of getting on that person’s calendar again, and maybe even be shut out of the account entirely because the executive feels like he or she has been baited and switched. And if you’re the one who invested a lot of money and effort in the tool that does not get used because the salesperson feels burned by it, what are those costs?

I’m not against these tools. They are extremely useful and should be an integral part of your sales toolkit. But they should be introduced with a solid and deep foundation of fundamental business and financial acumen. At the very least, you need to know what the drivers are of their success, be able to compare their financial performance to their peers, be conversant in the key issues of their industry, and translate the impacts that your solution can deliver into their preferred financial measures and operational metrics. This doesn’t mean that you have to learn enough to go toe-to-toe with the CFO, but you should know enough to know to not only ask better questions, but to actually do something constructive with their answers, unlike a certain lost tourist!

[1] You probably won’t be able to do what Max Planck’s chauffeur did!