I’ve stressed enough that value is determined by the listener, so you may be thinking by now, “What about me, don’t I get to get something out of my communication?”
Of course you do. It’s the same as selling a product: the buyer gets to decide if they get value, but naturally the producer is entitled to a fair profit if they do.
Lean communication is not a recipe for just rolling over and giving your listeners anything they want to hear; ultimately you communicate to accomplish your own outcomes and benefits. In fact, you do your listeners a favor if you have a clear idea of your own purpose, and if you make your ask explicit at the beginning. It reduces the tension of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and allows them to listen for what they need to make a decision.
A lot of people are reluctant to ask directly for what they want because they’re afraid of rejection, but research has shown that people are about twice as likely to say yes as they estimate. Don’t be afraid to ask. My neighbor Rocky once needed to get some carpet replaced. The installer quoted him a price, and Rocky asked, can you do it for less? The guy knocked $1,000 off without blinking an eye.
One question—a thousand dollars. That’s pretty lean, in my book!
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
When you hear the term lean communication, what immediately comes to mind? Most people who have heard about my new book but haven’t yet read it, immediately assume that it’s all about being brief. They’re partly right, but also totally wrong.
Using lean terms, brevity is important, but value is integral to your message. Brevity is important to lean communication just as a reasonable price is important when you buy a product. You don’t want to overpay, but that’s not the first thing you think about. Your first consideration is what that product will do for you—how it will make you better off. If you don’t want or need it, any price is too high, and if you really need it, almost any price is reasonable.
So when you’re planning what to say, find the value in your message first, and then work to make it as “affordable” as possible by making it brief and clear.
If you strive for brevity without thinking about value, that’s not lean–it’s just plain skinny.
If you’re a knowledge worker, the quality of your output depends on three skills: learning, thinking and communicating. As I argue in Lean Communication, communication is the most important of the three. That’s because it’s possible to learn and think well and not be a good communicator, but you can’t communicate well without also being good at the first two.
You don’t have to take my word for it; I’ve got backup for this argument from an unexpected source. In reading David Murray’s excellent new book, An Effort to Understand, I came across this quote from Isocrates, one of my long-ago predecessors in the presentations training business:
“…for the power to speak well is taken as the surest index of a sound understanding, and discourse which is true and lawful and just is the outward image of a good and faithful soul….[W]e shall find that none of the things that are done with intelligence takes place without the help of speech.”
The idea that intelligence requires the help of speech still rings true today. We’ve all had the feeling of having a brilliant thought that revealed its flaws the first time we tried to articulate it, and which forced us to rethink more clearly.
Learning and thinking create good ideas, but it takes communication to bring them to life through others. Think of all that brilliance in your head as potential energy, which can only be transformed into kinetic energy through effective communication.
