Get to the point

Once commuting on a train, I sat next to someone hard at work on a presentation. They were 72 slides in, editing a slide full of text in 10p font, as far as the eye could see. I realized with some horror that this slide was no exception to the rest in the presentation, and suddenly felt so sorry for the poor soul who would be doomed to be on the receiving end of it.

Why can't we be brief?

"In his Lettres Provinciales, the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal famously wrote: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

This sentiment […] reflects both the value and the challenges of brevity. On the one hand, brevity forces us to cut excess — to distill a message to its core. On the other hand, being accurate, clear, and concise can be hard, sometimes impossibly so.”

In my experience, people will forgive many things, even thick accents that some people feel terribly self-conscious about, or grammatical errors. But more glaring communication mistakes, like talking too much and not getting to the point, are hard to overlook and can have a lasting impact.

Communication is fundamental to work, and being bad at it hurts your prospects and relationships. If you say too much and rarely (or never) get to the point, people will start to think you're insincere, or not very smart, and maybe start avoiding you, without really telling you why.

But the opposite is also true: if you can organize and distill your thoughts, get your point across, and respect the other person's intelligence and time, you'll appear competent and self-assured.

School teaches the wrong things

I struggled, you struggle, we all struggle (at first). Communicating in a (Western) work environment is almost the opposite what we normally do, so it's natural to be bad if no one tells you how to do it.

Note that I exclude here cultures where doing business entails an elaborate rituals of getting to know each other, and meandering conversations to assess a business partner's character or intelligence may be a part of it. I'm talking more about everyday conversations about our work: reports, presentations, summaries, and so on.

We should learn how to communicate clearly in school, but education tends to incentivize fluff over substance. When assignments prioritize word counts or talking time, most students will think "great, how do I add more padding to hit the number?"

School is where we pick up bad habits like adding everything we researched to show we weren't lazy, pompous synonyms, filler text, setting strange values on document margins, font sizes, etc. that distract from the main point.

Is this you?

Think about some recent work conversations you've had:

• Did people ask you questions about things you thought were obvious?
• Ever forgot what you intended to say or realize you ended up talking about something tangential for a long time?
• Ever left conversations only to realize you didn't get the information you needed from the other person?
• Do your meetings frequently overrun?
• And the obvious: did someone ever interrupt you and point-blank told you to get to the point?

If the answers are yes, or you feel flustered just thinking about this list, then you have some challenges to address. I answered yes to most of these things fresh out of university.

So relax; this doesn't mean you're fundamentally flawed. Learning is a journey. But if you only take away one thing, remember that clear communication is a sign of mutual respect.

Three practices to help you distill your thoughts

Practice empathy

Empathy is a muscle that needs to be exercised at every opportunity until it becomes natural. Ask yourself this:

When you want to get your ideas across

• What does this person need to know?
• What did they know before?
• What will they do with the information?

When you want to get information from someone

• Are they the best person to ask?
• What specific information do I need from them?
• Have I tried getting this information myself?

Use a framework

Frameworks save you time because someone else faced the same challenges and solved them before.

Try a concept called the pyramid principle or the Minto principle. One of McKinsey's first female business analysts, Barbara Minto, came up with this principle. She and her team had a reputation for clear and effective communication, which is essential for consultants presenting months of work to executives who need to make high impact decisions.

The pyramid principle is a covered in a dedicated book. Its core idea is that ideas in writing should always form a pyramid under a single thought:

• At the bottom are the raw insights and data points you've collected and analyzed. You've done the work, and all this detail will be useful to know, document, and refer to, but will never be communicated fully to others.
• In the middle are the main conclusions you can draw from the data. These form the pillars for your key take-away or recommendation.
• At the top of the pyramid is your main point: a punchy statement or recommendation informed by your intermediary conclusions. If you only have time to say one thing about your work, this must be it.

In short, ideas at any level in the pyramid always summarize those below.

Great communicators start from the top, with as little information as possible, and go into more detail as needed. For example, in an interview, you can start with a direct answer to a question, and check if the interviewer if they want to know more. If they do, you can drill deeper into a few points that inform your reasoning (the middle of the pyramid). If they're particularly keen to test your knowledge, you can go even deeper and quote a stat or data point (bottom of the pyramid) you're aware of.

Cut out noise from your life

This may seem unconventional, but you'll regain precious time when you're less distracted by random things that don't sustain your goals and ambitions. The fewer things you truly care about, the clearer you can see why and what about them matters. As a result, your thinking and communication will eventually become clearer, and you'll become more thoughtful.

What's noise? It's up to you to figure out; my take is that anything not directly relevant to your immediate goals is noise. As the saying goes, we are drowining in information but starved for knowledge. You probably don't need to be informed about many things in your inbox or social feeds right now. You probably don't need to attend all the events or parties. And you probably don't need to have opinions on as many things either. If anyone holds that against you, their opinion may be noise too.

Happy distilling.