When?

It might be when you’re spinning your wheels on your own …

… or when you’re caught in an endless planning meeting.

Either way clarifying can help.

Clarify to reduce the risk of unpleasant surprises — if things are unclear, you’re unlikely to get what you want.

Clarify to get unstuck — ambiguity is a major driver of procrastination.

How?

First clarify the outcome:

Pick a topic that’s important to you and let’s do it right now.

Question 1: And what would you like to have happen?

Your answer: ……………………………….

Question 2: How will you know that it happened?

Describe direct sensory experiences. What will you be able to see, hear, touch, smell or taste?

This sounds simple, but it can be surprisingly hard. Our heads are full of abstract concepts that we equate with reality and we don’t often look at the world without that lense. And while all those concepts are essential for us to function in the world, it’s a powerful skill to be able to look at the ground reality beneath.

For example:

I want to improve usability.

I will know I have improved usability when the system is easier to use.

What does easier look like? What does it sound like? Can you touch easier? Can you smell it?!

How about: Given a task and 5 users, at least 4 of them complete the task within 10 seconds.

Now that’s something you can see. Start the clock. Go. Task complete. Where is the seconds hand?

It might feel pedantic at first — but I promise — it will pay dividends.

Ok, back to your topic: How will you know that it happened?

Your answer: ……………………………….

Finally we’re ready for question 3: Why is this important to you?

A key part to provide motivation for actually following through with the plan.

Or deciding it’s not worth doing after all!

Your answer: ……………………………….

Then clarify the action:

It should be pretty easy now.

In a group context ask: Who? What? When?

In an individual context ask: What is the next concrete action I need to take?

Your answer: ……………………………….

Clear?

Go on, do it

* Seal image by Alan Campbell via Unsplash.com.

The default example is a board full of cards that represent tasks and their status.

Something like this:

That is a powerful tactic and we will surely explore it in future posts.

But now I want to start with something a little different:

Visualize the outcomes your work is intended to deliver, not just the work itself.

Both direct and indirect outcomes.

Direct outcomes are the immediate results of your actions: for example the code you’ve written or the blog posts you’ve published.

Please note, it will be important soon: there’s minimal uncertainty about the action => outcome connection.

Direct outcomes are one thing, but it’s the indirect outcomes that are what really counts.

Most people care less about the code you’ve written and more about the app it is running,

less about the raw text of your posts and more about the things they can learn from them.

The gold is burried in the human needs waiting to be served by the (indirect) ourcomes of your work.

The only problem is that the connection between action and indirect outcomes is, well… indirect.

To achieve the really important indirect outcomes you need sustained action over time

… and some feedback loops to correct course on your way.

It can be hard, but if you consistently keep your eyes on what matters most you are bound to achieve amazing results.

Go forth and visualize!

Talk about what they care about …

… using the same words they use to describe it.

Great, but how do we know what people care about?

Here are three ways: Listen, Ask and Observe.

1) Listen

Many people love to talk, especially if they feel you’re listening.

They will happily give you a lot of useful information.

Don’t interrupt them.

Pay high quality attention to what they’re saying (or writing).

Notice how they’re describing the situation (what is), the problem (what they don’t want) and the desired outcome (what they do want).

Note the exact words they’re using.

Take notes and refer to them when you’re preparing your own message.

2) Ask

You can also nudge your conversation partner to explore their thinking more.

About the situation and the problem you can ask:

• “What is that like?”,
• “What’s the most important thing about this?”,
• “And what happens then?“

When they tell you about a problem, resist the urge to offer solutions.

First turn the conversation towards desired outcomes by asking:

• “And what would you like to have happen?”

Listen and explore some more.

In this whole process don’t ask too many questions at once.

Ask one question and immediately switch back to high quality listening.

Now you know a lot more about what people care about and you have a much higher chance of making your own communication much more meaningful.

To them.

3) Observe

Sometimes people are not ready to tell you their deepest thoughts and desires.

Sometimes they might not be sure themselves.

The fallback solution it to also observe what they actually do in key situations.

That can often tell you a lot about what might be meaningful to that person.

Update your assumptions accordingly.

That’s it.

1-2-3.

Listen-Ask-Observe.

Try for yourself and tell me your story!

See you soon,

Michał

PS. If you’re looking for even more practice in exploring outcomes and creating strong alignment you might like Outcome Focused Leadrship.

Last week we covered the first C of good communication: Concrete

Today it’s time for the second C: Concise

1) The best way to make your communication concise is to start with your main point.

Add details, supporting arguments and the steps you took to come up with your main point only as much as necessary to inform or influence.

One way to think about it is as the pyramid principle:

1. main point at the top
2. supporting information below

Americans have a related saying: “don’t sell past the close”.

If the customer is ready to buy – close the sale – if you continue talking, all you’re doing is risk losing them.

2) The other thing you should do is to delete stuff that does not contribute to the purpose of the communication.

It might seem that adding arguments or information will increase effectiveness, but I’d bet that you are severely overestimating people’s available mental bandwidth.

Even if you’re dealing with highly intelligent people – it’s very likely they have a lot on their plate – and if you dump a bunch of information that is not immediately relevant to them they will likely lose interest in whatever it is you’re trying to tell them.

When you type up your next draft message (incl. notes for a presentation or meeting):

1. reorder stuff to put the main point first
2. remove stuff that does not contribute enough
3. …
4. profit

See you soon!

PS. If you’ve found this tip useful please share it on Social Media adding your own comment on top. The habit of sharing things you have learned will reinforce your own knowledge and will contribute to your image as a helpful expert.

Also: the picture will look good in your feed!

We ended that tip with the statement that good communication is CCM: concrete, concise and meaningful.

Now we will make that tip more concrete.

My favorite ways to make communication more concrete are:

1) Show, don’t tell (covered in the very first One Minute Tip):

• in meetings: whenever you talk about something — share your screen and show it, if it doesn’t exist yet — create it (at least give it a name and address and some initial notes to be developed later),
• in text: whenever you mention something — link to it.

2) If the communication is related to some kind of action or event — make sure there are clear answers to the five core journalistic questions: Who? What? When? Where?and Why? (for what purpose) as well as the bonus question How?

Start with the top 3: Who? What? When?

Make it a habit.

Who, What, When

WhoWhatWhen

WHO WHAT WHEN

Not all communication requires this level of concreteness,

but if it’s missing

don’t expect conrete results.

3) “When in doubt spell it out!”

If you’re responsible for the work of more than one person you’re better off erring on the side of caution and over-communicating.

Make references concrete.

Explicit is better than implicit.

Perhaps even say the same thing in a few different ways.

Here’s what I mean:

bad: “let’s learn to communicate better” (everyone agrees, and likely nothing will happen)

better: “let’s practice communicating better with short chunks of writing this Friday at 3pm on Zoom” (concrete who, what, when / people might not be interested but at least it will be clear)

best: “let’s practice communicating better with short chunks of writing this Friday at 3pm on Zoom” (who what when & a link to more information for the people who want it)

Try it!

PS. Next tip will be about how to make your communication concise.

PPS. If you like this series of tips, please share it with someone who might like it too!

Let me explain:

Communicate well

What counts as communicating well depends on the purpose:

1. if it’s information — is it easy to understand and relevant to what the audience cares about?
2. if the purpose is influence — does it move people to action?
3. if it’s a question — is easy to answer with the right information?

In short chunks

Long-form communication is useful, but for effective remote work we must especially master communicating in short chunks.

It’s not only meaty articles, exhustive technical manuals or detailed presentations.

It’s a bunch of short snippets that contains the lifeblood of our daily interactions towards getting things done:

1. clear and actionable e-mails,
2. chat messages that are easy to understand and respond to,
3. informative comments on work items,
4. as well as spoken statements during face to face conversations.

Of writing

Meetings are still important, 1on1 video conversations do play a crucial role, recorded explanations are now super easy to record thanks to services like Loom.

But the bread and butter of remote communication is, and should be, written.

Prefereably captured in a transparent and reliable repository like Trello or a Wiki not a semi-ephemeral form like chat or email.

Ok, but how?

I like to think about making my communication CCM:

Concrete, Concise and Meaningful.

More concrete tips on how to do that are coming in the next several One Minute Tips, but for now:

How good is the communication you receive in your daily work?

Is it CCM?

How good is the communication you typically send (or speak)?

What might you be able to do if your communication skills improved significantly?

See you soon!

If you want to create a successful product or service a common piece of advice I hear is to “wow” your customers.

To deliver such moments of sheer delight that they will never forget it.

If you’re a leader the same goes for creating a great employee experience.

This advice can be misleading.

One problem with “wow” effects is due to a natural human mechanism of hedonic adaptation.

Humans get used to a new normal very quickly and come to seek out more and more hits of the emotional high that you were trying to target.

Don’t chase that high.

Instead ask yourself:

What do I want my product or service to be remembered for?

And don’t settle for generic statements like high quality.

Ask: what kind of quality?

Be specific.

I want _________ to be remembered for:

1. __________________
2. __________________
3. __________________

And when 1, 2, 3: what happens then?

______________________________________________________

______________________________________________________

______________________________________________________

What does that look, sound and feel like?

______________________________________________________

______________________________________________________

______________________________________________________

Now you’re ready to start putting that into practice.

And never stop.

You know you’re on the right track when people start telling each others stories about how you’re consistently delivering your kind of quality.

How would you describe the qualities of this newsletter?

Is it different in any way to what you’re used to?

Has it made a difference in your life?

Tell me your story!

Will your project succeed?

That question hangs on a simple commandment:

Make things people want.

Great, but how do we know what people want?

This is definitely a difficult question,

but there’s a powerful technique that can help cut through ambiguity.

It is to quantify the top 10 most important things for your project or product.

Express them as a number.

Clarify with your most important stakeholders that it’s actually what they had in mind.

And then estimate the impact of the options you’re considering on those values.

I promise you it will bring to the surface misunderstandings that might otherwise derail your whole initiative.

Do this:

1. Bring your key stakeholders together.

2. Ask what they value most: what is most important for them.

Try to express it as a concrete number,

what will you actually be able to see or hear when you’re successful?

How much of that?

Got the list?

Great.

Now:

3. List your options: the projects or strategies you were considering.

4. Using your collective best guess: how big of an impact will that project or strategy have on each of the most important stakeholder values?

At what cost?

Of course you will not be sure at this point.

Don’t worry, we’ll validate the assumptions later.

But some strategies will obviously not be reasonable.

Drop those.

Focus on the most promising ones.

Iterate in short cycles.

Try it and let me know how it goes for you!

A different way is to think about Trello as a structured whiteboard that you can use for online workshops or even distributed, asynchronous sense-making and problem solving.

Unlike a dedicated task management tool like JIRA, Trello is much more flexible in how you organize your columns and what you put in individual cards.

Unlike a dedicated whiteboard tool lika Jamboard, Miro or Mural, Trello allows for just enough structure that let’s you make sense of a large amount of items but is also easier to use for people who are new to it.

For example Trello cards are individually adressable. You can link directly to a specific idea that was born during a big workshop. You don’t have to wade through all the other stuff that happened there, but it is close by if you do need some context. A very important trait for integrating the stuff you do in Trello into the wider context of your team’s information flows.

Here’s a sneak peek at a part of the board that we used for a recent workshop about reducing meeting overload:

Here’s a board used to collect and share a catalog of great ideas collected over the whole year by Andrei Gavrila. Notice the amazing scanability of the ideas. I dare you to create a better summary in a regular blog post or wiki page:

And finally here’s the article by Paul Klipp that introduced me to the idea many years ago. It’s a description of how to use a Kanban board for remote retrospectives.

It uses a different app called Kanbanery, but the same ideas can be easily used in Trello. Thanks Paul!

Have you ever found yourself on one side of a situation like this?

Ancient philosophers knew it and modern ones developed the idea:

We do NOT have direct access to reality:

1. We perceive an extremely small part of it using our limited and unreliable senses. 
2. Then we interpret the meaning based on our cultural context, past experience, the vocabulary we wield and even our needs and wants.
3. Then do we decide what to do.

And that’s an extremely good thing. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to function in an extremely complex world.

But sometimes it can lead to,

let’s just say,

suboptimal results.

As Caitlin Walker teaches us:

1. we should be able to distinguish between the evidence we see or hear
2. and the inference – that is the story we make up about it

Is your story really the most useful story you could be telling yourself about the situation?

How would the story change if you assumed positive intent?

Until next time,

Michał