You're too Smart for Them

I live in a bizarro world.

I deliver strategic workshops to Executives using frameworks and tools I taught first year students at a University over ten years ago. I work through my own systems and frameworks with junior, middle, and senior managers of all descriptions. It is the same stuff, but the context, language, and lens delivered through is tweaked for these various audiences.

It is difficult for people to understand, and to be honest, I even find it difficult to wrap my head around it most of the time.

What makes it weirder is delivering these tools to junior audiences are much harder than to senior leaders. I liken it to teaching mathematics to a five year old or a 15 year old - the teenager may give you a little back chat but at least they know the difference between an isosceles and a quadrilateral triangle.

But, what I have learnt is that the more senior a manager, client, or stakeholder the simpler we need to make our message to gain their buy-in or investment. It is counterintuitive but there are very good reasons for this:

• They are time poor - no explanation needed

• They are attention poor - they are being bombarded with requests, messages, updates, and stimulus constantly

• They are information rich - they are exposed to many factors, insights, and details you probably are not

• They are on the balcony - they are seeing the wider picture, and the thing you are talking to them about is one small garden bed in the entire garden

Complexity is the enemy when speaking to important people. Jeremy Iron's character in the movie Margin Call sums it up best. He is the 'big boss' in a financial firm about to go through financial Armageddon. In 'the' crisis meeting, he asks the analyst to explain the problem to him:

"Speak as you might to a young child or a golden retriever. It wasn't brains that got me here I can assure you that"      

Image source: Diffusion of Knowledge (Youtube)

This reality of our playing field is something we find difficult to understand. We have a need to be clever, smart, sophisticated or detailed when communicating in high stakes scenarios. Yet, this turns decision makers off. I have seen it in management meetings, client pitches, sales meetings, education forums, conference speakers, and book launches. The ones that nail it are able to refine, distill, and curate their message into its simplest form.

I documented the biggest mistakes we make with our communication recently (The Hateful Eight, 23 Aug 2024). But what are the most important realities we need to factor in for our message to be heard by Senior Management and important Decision Makers?

1. What is obvious to you is difficult for them - What you are speaking to them about is new to them. You are the subject matter expert, they are not (even if they used to do your job previously).

2. Your priority is not their priority - they live in a complex, fast moving, politically ridden, high-risk environment. Their agenda is vastly different to yours. If they cannot see how your idea fits into their agenda then you (or your idea) are toast. Make their life better/easier or be forgotten.

3. They don't have bandwidth for nonsense - all the data and detail is nonsense. It really is. It is guff. Filler. Gunk. It sounds disrespectful, but in context of their position this is the truth. They're brain literally does not have 'chunking' space to receive, comprehend, and memorise all the detail. The quicker we understand this reality, the less pain we will experience.

So, what is to be done?

The quick tip is to simplify, simplify, simplify. Take all the stuff you know about the topic and then distill it. Take the harvest of a lavender field and run it through a distillation process with vats, steam, and time until the only thing left is the essential oil. That means you hit them between the eyes with the one big idea, the one big number, the one big story, and the one big outcome. Maybe just one of these. That's it.

There is an artform and science to this, but all of us could do with making our proposals, pitches, and general communications shorter, more succinct, punchier and pointier.

And, yes - I am aware my blogs go for far too long! I'm working on it, just like the rest of you. 

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