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More value, less waste is the mantra and fundamental goal of the lean manufacturing movement, which has produced tremendous increases in quality and productivity since it began to be introduced in the second half of the last century.

If you are hearing this, you are almost certainly a knowledge worker, which means that your success is directly tied to your ability to take in, process, and communicate information in a fashion that is useful to others.

In a world where we can transmit huge volumes of information instantly, talk to people around the globe simultaneously, share screens, and exchange clips of cute cats with childhood chums, communication is easier, faster and more plentiful than ever before.

But when talk is so cheap, fast and ubiquitous, useful and meaningful communication is at the same time harder than it’s ever been. That’s because the very ease of creating and transmitting it means that useless information is churned out much faster than ever, and it becomes much tougher to get exactly what you need to make good decisions or take the right action. In economics, Gresham’s Law states that bad money drives out good, and I’m convinced that the same dynamic applies to communication.

Remember the old story of the young boy who received a pile of horse manure, and dove in excitedly because he knew there was a pony in there somewhere? Like that boy, I am an optimist: I do believe the pony is in there, but it’s getting harder and harder to find because the mountain of crap just keeps getting higher.

The solution is lean communication, which is all about producing more value with less waste.

The Economics of Lean Communication

In a free market, companies create profits by creating value that others are willing to pay for, in excess of their costs of production. If they want to generate more profits, they must either increase the value or reduce their costs, and this focus on the bottom-line forces a customer-centered discipline. Before introducing a new product, they have to think carefully about whether customers will buy it, and whether they can produce it profitably.

When their customers consider whether to buy their products, they measure the value they receive in terms of ROI, which simply is a division problem, with Return on top and Investment on the bottom. While there is always a lot of gray area in deciding what results and costs to include in the calculation, it’s still a reasonably straightforward way of prioritizing how to invest their limited capital.

We all take this for granted when it comes to business, but is it possible that we forget it when we communicate? Just as companies don’t pump out products unless they think they’ll sell, we should not just pump out words without thinking about whether they are worth listening to. Will listeners be willing to pay the price in time and effort to hear what you have to say?

It may seem like a no-brainer, but if you’ve ever sat through an interminable and unproductive meeting, and calculated the total opportunity cost of everyone in that room, if you’ve had to wade through hundreds of emails to glean actionable information, if you’ve worked hard to decode what someone is really saying, if you’ve had to tolerate a chatty co-worker when you’re in a hurry, you know how rarely people think about communication in this way.

In a world where it is so easy to communicate instantly and electronically, it would seem that talk is cheaper than ever. But the real cost is the hidden opportunity cost: what is the combined value of the time that is used by speaker and audience, including all the process steps from composing the thoughts, writing/speaking, transmitting and discussing?

Return on Time and Effort

It’s much more slippery to pin down the return on communication, but we can at least try to measure the unmeasurable by applying the same thought process as ROI. I call it RoTE, or Return on Time and Effort.

Return: What value does your audience receive from listening to you? We measure value in lean communication in terms of outcomes and results. When the information shared improves a decision or leads to effective action that generates measurable outcomes, you could theoretically put an actual dollar value on that conversation or presentation. Of course, that’s tough to measure, but still, it’s one of those things that people know when they see it or hear it. It’s also important to note that value is defined by the listener, not the speaker.

Practically and mathematically, R is the most important factor in the equation. If it’s zero or negative, no amount of brevity or clarity will make the communication worthwhile, and if it’s high enough, almost any amount of time and effort will be worth devoting to it.

That said, it’s still important to concentrate on the denominator of the equation. Unlike ROI, in which the investment is only calculated in dollars, communication requires the investment of two costly currencies: attention and cognitive effort.

Time is of course the most easily measurable factor. How much time do you take in getting your message across? Do you get right to the point, or do you overload your listeners with information they already know, do you hold back vital information out of fear of offending, do you have trouble resisting interesting but irrelevant snippets and trivia?

The paradox of brevity is that it takes time to produce. When Mark Twain received this telegram from a publisher:

NEED 2-PAGE SHORT STORY TWO DAYS

He sent back this reply:

NO CAN DO 2 PAGES TWO DAYS. CAN DO 30 PAGES 2 DAYS. NEED 30 DAYS TO DO 2 PAGES

So, there is a cost/benefit analysis you have to run through your mind: is there any net value added when you invest your time to save time for the listener? The answer is almost always yes, first because when you are presenting to audiences of more than one person, it’s easy to see that an extra hour of preparation to shorten your presentation can pay off in multiples, especially when you are presenting to higher-level people whose opportunity cost of listening can quickly add up to big numbers. Second, the thinking you put into effort of making things brief carries over to the next part of the equation, effort.

Effort is harder to measure but no less important than time. The simple truth is that thinking is hard work, and we generally avoid doing any more than is absolutely necessary. As with brevity, you work hard so they don’t have to. The harder you make people work to understand what you’re saying, the more of their time you take and the less value you add to them.

Building equity

When companies create profits, they build equity which strengthens their balance sheets and provides resources to generate future profits. It’s the same way with personal communication. As you build a reputation for delivering good value through lean communication, you are building personal equity in the form of credibility.

Credibility can lead to the Matthew Effect, the idea that the rich get richer. By consistently delivering a Return, at low cost in time and effort, you will generate greater trust, with more decision makers who will require less verification of your arguments and facts, and accordingly save time over the long run—for yourself and for others. That is priceless, whether you can put a dollar value on it or not.

In the next podcast, I’m going to walk you through the ABCs of Lean Communication: How to Add value, Briefly and Clearly.

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Do you want to know how to make an instant connection to other people, while looking smart and confident and putting them in a good mood, all at the same time?

Sorry, I can’t help you. You’ve come to the wrong place.

Just kidding. There actually is a magic substance that can do all those things for you, but it’s tricky to work with and can blow up in your face if you mess up. By now you already know that I’m talking about: humor.

I still remember a loan committee meeting over 30 years ago when Scott, a loan officer, was talking about a borrower with a difficult sounding name, and our President said, “European?” Scott looked confused for a second, and then said, “Oh, I thought you were going to tell me European in the wind if you think you’re going to get this loan approved.”

Some of you reading this may have just laughed out loud. Some of you may have had to re-read it because you didn’t get the joke at first. (Hint: say it out loud). Some of you didn’t think it was funny, and some of you may have even been offended, and I’ve possibly lost you as a reader.

That little  story points out the power and peril of using humor in a business environment. Humor can be an enormously effective and useful tool in business communication, but it can also be slippery and hard to handle. It can help you connect with an audience or turn them against you in an instant.

Why does humor work so well?

Humor can be an enormously powerful tool in persuasive business communication. Let’s look at some of the benefits you can get if when it works.

It gets everyone’s attention. The essence of humor is surprise, and surprise always compels attention. Our brains are exquisitely tuned to anything that breaks a pattern or an expectation, and that’s exactly what a joke or quip can do. Also, everyone listen because no one wants to be left out of the joke.

It can level the playing field. As I recall that meeting, Scott was a junior loan officer who was making his first presentation to the high ranking people in the room. The status gulf was pretty wide, but he closed it instantly by getting everyone to laugh and appreciate his wit. They saw him as a likeable person and were more disposed to listen to what he had to say. By getting everyone to share in a common emotion, you’ve brought the group together, with yourself as the center and the catalyst. As Victor Borge said, “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”

It can help something stick in memory. The fact that that story popped into my mind as I was thinking about writing this article attests to that. Even thirty years later, I still remember it and chuckle about it. When Abraham Lincoln was first running for office in rural Illinois, he told lots of humorous stories, and people would remember and repeat them long after he moved to the next town, and that is what got him elected. By the way, Lincoln one time when a heckler yelled out that Lincoln was two-faced, he said, “If I had two faces would I wear this one?”

Humor can defuse tension. When people are angry or tense, humor can be a relief valve. Bank manager’s desk story…

It can disarm a skeptical and even hostile audience. Humor is a great way to open someone’s mind enough to slip in a serious point. When people are in a good mood, their minds are going to be more open and receptive to what you have to say. When liberal Ted Kennedy was invited to speak at a fundamentalist school, he opened with: “Actually, a number of people in Washington were surprised that I was invited to speak here—and even more surprised when I accepted the invitation. They seem to think that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a Kennedy to come to the campus of Liberty Baptist College.”

It can defuse a potential weakness. When Ronald Reagan debated Walter Mondale in 1984, he knew Mondale was going to make an issue out of his age, so he said “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” When he said that, even Mondale had to laugh, and he knew he was beaten.

It can make you look smart. We all admire someone whose quick wit lets them rise to the occasion when the pressure’s on. But it goes deeper than that. Think about it: when you say something that makes people laugh, it’s because you’ve thought of something they haven’t.

It makes you look confident. It takes confidence to poke fun at yourself and having the guts to expose the humor in an otherwise serious situation. Besides, just because telling a joke can be risky, others may admire your gut to try to pull it off.

Humor is a great way to create contrast in your presentation. You can lighten up when things get too serious, or get people laughing and then quickly switch gears to something serious when you have their attention.

But wait, it can be risky

Using humor is kind of like throwing a forward pass in football. Three things can happen, and two of them are bad. Your joke may fall flat, or it may actually hurt you.

Let’s take a look at the potential downsides, in descending order of seriousness.

It can get you fired. I don’t need  to spend too  much time on this here. We all know how sensitive our times have become, and anything you say even in private can quickly become viral global news.

It can insult someone. Leaving aside the ethical considerations of hurting someone, you can easily lose the goodwill of the target and potentially lose the whole audience by appearing mean-spirited.

You’ve made yourself  look awkward, nervous, or simply trying too hard. We’re often advised to start a presentation with a joke to break the ice, but that’s become so common that people may see right through it and think less of you.

You’ve made yourself  look like a non-serious person. If you’re speaking with a high-ranking audience, their time is valuable and the first thirty seconds or so can be crucial; you may waste it by taking a cheap shot.

How to use humor without hurting yourself

Considering the balance of reward and risk, let’s first set out to do no harm, and then figure out how to use it to positive effect.

If you’re planning ahead to use humor in your presentation, make sure it’s appropriate. It doesn’t have to be G-rated for an adult audience, but maybe you should make it PG. By that I don’t mean parental guidance—use peer guidance: try it out on your peers and get their impression. And if you’re in doubt, leave it out.

Respect the occasion or the topic. While humor is a welcome guest at almost any occasion. Sometimes it can trivialize or demean the situation.

Make sure it’s relevant. We’ve seen how a clever remark can stick in someone’s memory, but if it’s not connected to your message people will remember the joke but not the point you were hoping to make.

Know your limitations, both in general and also about specific forms of humor. I’m not especially good at telling long-form jokes, the kind that involves a story and a punch line at the end. Most people take too long to tell the story and mess up the timing of the punch line, which is why professional comedians practice endlessly before they bring out a joke in public.

Singe but don’t burn. Humor can be a great way to score points against opposing arguments, but if you use it, beware of being mean. It can turn the audience against you in a microsecond and turn you into the bad guy.

If you want to make fun of someone, let it be yourself. Self-deprecating humor is especially useful in two totally different situations. If you’re higher-ranking than your listeners, you can use it to make yourself seem more human and humble. On the other side, if you have a weakness or limitation that makes your listeners skeptical about you, you can preempt it by joking about it.

Humor is most effective when it complements your message without calling too much attention to itself. If you say something funny and it works, great—go with the flow. Don’t make a big deal out of it or call attention to yourself and how clever you are. If some people don’t get it, don’t try to call attention to it or try to explain it. If your joke or quip falls flat, it’s only awkward if you dwell on it; either cut your losses and simply move on, or make a self-deprecating joke about your feeble attempt and then move on.

Can you develop your humor?

There are some professionals who say that humor is actually a skill that you can learn and improve. I believe them, but even they warn you that it’s not easy. It takes a lot of thought, time and practice to develop the skill, so you have to decide whether it’s the best use of your time. Those stand-up comedians we admire who make it look so easy have actually spent thousands of hours perfecting their craft.

Most people don’t have the time or the motivation to work hard at it, but the good news is you don’t have to. My own advice is really the same thing I would say about any other rhetorical device: if you know your thinking is sound and your message is strong, then you can add it as additional spice; just don’t be afraid to be loosen up and have a little fun with it.

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Can’t we all just get along? I’m not talking about ethnic groups or political parties—I’m talking about an even greater divide: the numbers people and the words people. The word tribe says that people decide on stories and emotions, so it doesn’t make sense to bore your listeners with numbers that they won’t understand anyway. The numbers tribe will tell you that the plural of anecdote is not data and if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.

I say that you need to become comfortable in both languages. You need to be bilingual in your presentations, and make adjustments up or down on the balance between numbers and words depending on the topic or the audience or the purpose of your presentation.

The case for more numbers:

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of science.  Lord Kelvin

How numbers make you more persuasive:

1. There are two forms of evidence that carry greater weight than any others: eyewitness testimony and empirical data. But when you think about it, empirical data actually is a form of eyewitness testimony, because it could only have been gathered by someone or something being there to measure it. Using data in your argument proves that you or someone has actually witnessed a phenomenon, an furthermore has observed it closely enough to precisely describe it.
2. Numbers can improve your thinking. Philip Tetlock, who studies the track record of “experts” forecasters, has found that asking people to quantify their forecasts—by switching from words like probably to 75% chance, for example, forces them to think more carefully about the factors that may influence the actual event. It forces you to think in finer-grained detail about what you know and don’t know. By the same token, who is more believable?
3. Numbers can clarify. In other words, putting a number on something reduces the chances for error, uncertainty or miscommunication.
4. Numbers can provide cover to decision makers who plan to do something anyway, and they can make it easier for them to sell the idea to others.

The case for fewer numbers:

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” William Cameron

1. Using too many numbers can either bore or overwhelm your audience. They can’t be convinced if they’re not listening.
2. People don’t charge up a hill waving a spreadsheet. Numbers by themselves don’t carry meaning or value
3. Sometimes it’s too costly or time-consuming to get exactly the information you need, so you can run into analysis paralysis and lose opportunities
4. Numbers can give you a false sense of certainty. There’s something convincing about a precise number, but you might forget that it’s derived from a model, and that model is based on assumptions that are only educated guesses.

Find the right balance

As Colin Powell said:

“My own experience is that you get as much information as you can and then you pay attention to your intuition, to your informed instinct. Sometimes what my analytical mind says to me is not what I’ll do.

“Generally you should act somewhere between P40 and P70, as I call it. Some time after you have obtained 40% of all the information you are liable to get, start thinking in terms of making a decision. When you have about 70% of all the information, you probably ought to decide, because you may lose an opportunity in losing time.”

Know your audience. Know who decides, how many in each audience, and what the corporate culture expects.

The key is to make the numbers meaningful to your audience

Meaning before detail. Give them the bottom line and the conclusion of the numbers, and then use the numbers to support. Use only relevant numbers…every number should answer the So What test.

Provide the context first, and then the numbers. Believe it or not, an annual report provides an excellent example of this. You don’t get to the numbers section until way back in the annual report. The first sections are devoted to management’s explanations in the form of the Chairman’s Letter and Management’s Discussion of results. You need to find the meaning and the conclusions in the numbers and then back it up with the data.

Make the number something they can relate to. People have difficulty understanding large numbers; it’s best if they are on a human scale. For example, a $14 trillion national debt is incomprehensible—but not when you know it’s $140k for every non-government employee. (I hope that didn’t ruin your day.)

Percentages vs. real numbers. Another choice is to decide whether to express your numbers as real numbers or as percentages. In general, real numbers have greater impact, as demonstrated by research as well as common sense. Research shows that people generally find percentages easier to understand, but numbers have more impact. For example, in a study that sent postcards out asking for support for cancer research, a statement saying that cancer could strike thirty million Americans got more contributions than one that said it could strike 10% of the population. 10% is a concept; 30 million Americans is a lot of people.

Speak the language of their numbers. Senior level decision makers have a scorecard they follow very closely. At top levels, the scorecard may measure financial results such as revenues and profitability; at operational levels they are going to pay attention to process metrics such as throughput, cost per ton, etc. Know your audience, find out how they are measured, and use those measurements  in your presentation for credibility and impact.

Choose the reference point. If your reliability is 99.7% and your next best competitor’s is 99.4%, that doesn’t sound like a large enough difference to be worth touting. That’s because you’re starting from zero. But if you start from 100% and work backwards, the picture totally changes, as you can see in this explanation:

“Last year, Delta canceled just 0.3% of its flights, according to flight-tracking service FlightStats.com. That was twice as good as the next-best airlines, Southwest and Alaska, and five times better than the industry average of 1.7%.”

Seen in this light, Delta is 5 times better than the industry average. It is totally accurate and there is nothing underhanded about saying it this way. If you had to choose between two airlines for an important trip, would you pay a little extra for the one that has half the chance of being cancelled? Maybe the practical side of you says the chances of cancellation are so small in either case that you wouldn’t spend the premium, but what if the choice was between two surgical procedures, would that change your decision?