Today’s value tip is about helping clients understand what you are saying by getting to the point as soon as possible.  

If you prefer to read it… see below. 

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When you’re communicating is it really clear what the message is that you want to get across?  

And are you getting it across in a way that someone goes, “oh, great, thank you or I needed that or, yeah, that was really valuable?”  

Because more often than not someone reading a communication has to trawl through everything else you’ve written to find out what the point was, you’re trying to make. 

With all this craziness of the coronavirus, all I want to know, (I’ve got school-age kids), is when there’s a communication that comes through from the school I just want to know: 

“Is the school closed or is it business as usual?”   

So over the last couple of days, we’ve been getting these notifications on our online system about the school and what they’re doing.  

And every time I’ve got to ‘go in’ (to the online app), I’ve got to download the word document, I’ve got to read it all and after reading it all, I then get to the ‘oh ok, so schools still open, nothing’s changed.’ 

What would have been super helpful is in the notification that comes up and flashes on my phone, it would have been great if it just had of said, “Schools are not closing, if you want to know more ‘blah’, here it is.” 

Then for those parents, and I know there are some of them, they want to know what the ministers are saying what the health ministers are saying when it comes to ‘are schools closing or not?’  

I just want to know, is the school closing, or is it not? 

But if they had have put that in the subject line, it would have saved me a lot of unnecessary time reading through a lot of unnecessary information to still find out its business as usual.   

And it really made me think of how we communicate in general in business.   

So when you are in particular, sending emails or anything that’s written, is it really clear in the subject line, what this is about? 

Or in those first couple of sentences is it really clear “what’s in this for me”, or what this message really is going to summarise? 

Then, by all means, put the detail because there are people that want that detail.  

But that those that just want the high level, big picture, make that really easy for me.   

Because if it’s not easy and I’m going to spend my time having to trawl through it, I’m going to miss the point.   

And I might miss getting to it as soon as I need to.  

So with all this craziness, this is a really great chance to have a look at how you communicate.   

Are you making that message clear?   

And are you making it easy for me to understand what it is that you’re trying to say?

Ps. Given the challenging times, if there’s something I can do to help out, please know I’m here and I’d be delighted to hear from you. Email me on kim@9rok.com.au