LTYM - Boil It down

Letters to a Young Manager

Boil It down, #511
LTYM > Communication

Dear Sophie,

***

I know it's hard to only get a 10 minute slot on your CEO's agenda to present a complex issue. Being succinct and to-the-point takes practice and anticipation.

One of my guest speakers tells a story about a CEO, who said to him, give me a summary of this particular technology issue they were facing in their business. And he came back with six slides. He said, here's the summary on six slides. And the CEO said, Okay, that's good. Can you do it in three? And he went back, and he tightened it up. And he edited it down. And we came back with three slides. And the CEO said, much better. Now, can you do it on one? And my colleague threw his arms up and with exasperation in his voice said, you want me to take and reduce all this time and effort I spent to a single slide? Why? The CEO said, I'll tell you why. He said, because if every decision we're faced with, can be boiled down to one slide, we can make more decisions as an organization in any given week and we'll be faster to market and for our customers. So, it optimizes the management of the organization. My colleague, now a CEO himself, presented his summary on a single slide.

So boil it down, and make your recommendation. Your job is to help the senior manager make a decision, now!

***

Sincerely yours,
Ed

________________________

References...

Takeaways:

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Discussion Questions:

1. Look at your last presentation. Can you boil it down to a single slide of tweets?
2. If "a picture is worth a thousand words", what's the one diagram, chart or image that makes your point?
3. If you were writing an ad for your project, what would be the tag line?

For Further Reading:

See "Finding the Bottom Line," https://eghapp.blogspot.com/2011/07/finding-bottom-line.html